


Deep Blue

by apostategarbage



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Anal Sex, Dragon Age Kink Meme, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 03:53:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4289856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apostategarbage/pseuds/apostategarbage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a dance Dorian knows well enough. One day, perhaps, he will be in a position to get what he wants, till then, he is happy to take what he can get.</p><p>Originally posted on the kink meme, prompt & link in author's notes</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "I see all these fluffy Cullrian fics and I love them, I just... I live for the angst.
> 
> So here's the 411, Dorian fancies Cullen HARD. Slightly dark!Cullen is straight or at the very least not interested in a romantic relationship with another man, but he doesn't stop when Dorian offers to go down on him occasionally.
> 
> Cue Dorian desperately trying to woo Cullen with sexual favors, trying to make him feel good, pining for him, but knowing he'll never get what he truly wants. His reasoning is if he can't have Cullen 100%, he'll simply take what he can get.
> 
> ++Dorian being somewhat accustomed to being used.  
> +++angst.  
> ++++++futile pining.
> 
> CAN be happy ending, not opposed to Cullen in the end realizing he loves Dorian as well. Or sad ending, where Dorian is left in tears when Cullen moves on to relationship with F!Quiz. Or whatever. Get creative!
> 
> Squicks; Adoribull. I love it, but I just don't want bull to the rescue. In this fic, id prefer if it was Cullen for Dorian or no one at all."
> 
> http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/13696.html?thread=53309312#t53309312
> 
> Also, it should be noted I started writing this in April before World of Thedas 2 came out, so I've undershot and overshot Dorian and Cullen's ages by like 5 years each respectively.

At first, he's one of the few person in Haven who gives Dorian the time of day. They are polite, and each is taken aback by the other's civility. They begin to talk, to actively seek each other's company. They discover a mutual fondness for board games and history – by the end of the first chess match, Dorian considers them friends.

It changes at Skyhold. Dorian blames the panic at Haven; the comradery that comes from terror. 

He comes to see Dorian in his nook in the library and noisily worries about the presence of Hawke, his effect on Cassandra and Varric. Dorian tells a joke that makes Cullen smile; there's a lightness in Dorian's chest, then, that settles like a pile of rocks in the pit of his belly.

 _Oh dear,_ thinks Dorian.

*

Dorian is kept back with the other mages at Adamant. They’re atop the ramparts, told to deal with archers and keep their distance from the Wardens and their mages, lest they fall prey to the binding. Dorian thinks it’s absurdly paranoid, but then, he’s not in charge. 

So he doesn’t see Lavellan fall into the fade, nor does he see her getting spat back out of a rift. He does, however, see far more of that strange dragon than he’d have liked. A Ferelden mage to his left names it Archdemon, and Dorian scoffs, disbelieving, but doesn’t know enough about dragons or Archdemons to argue. 

*

Lavellan answers his questions about the Fade well enough, and even drops some gobbets of information Dorian hadn’t thought to ask. There are many gaps in her education, so she takes the opportunity to ask her own questions and Dorian explains the things about the Fade she’d been particularly baffled by. 

“Maybe you’ll know about this then, seeing as how you’re so educated, n’that,” she says. “There was gravestones, a whole yard of them, with all of our names on them, with the thing we’re most scared of, I think.” She takes a moment to look into the campfire. “Mine said _failure_. At first I was scared it was describing what we were… Any way, you don’t think it was… Prophetic, or something, do you?” She’s chewing the skin around her fingers, eyes massive, pale and watery.

“No. No, of course not. Just the demon trying to get a rise out of you, I should think,” says Dorian. “Out of curiosity – what did mine say?”

Lavellan looks guilty. “I promise I tried not to read them,” she says. “It seemed so rude but… Sera started reading them aloud,” she sighs. “Yours said Temptation.”

 

*

They are sat by the fire in the kitchen, giggling like children who've broken into the larder. Cullen caps his flask and tosses it to Dorian, his skin flushed pink with liquor and heat. He scratches the back of his neck and looks up at Dorian through his eyelashes. His lips are parted and oh, doesn't Dorian want to pounce.

“What do you think of her?” Cullen asks, suddenly.

“Of who?”

“The Inquisitor. Lady Lavellan.” He speaks her name with reverence. Dorian hadn't realised he'd leant forward at some point, but he has. He shrinks back, spine propped against the table leg, suddenly aware of how cold the floor is.

“I like her,” Dorian does.

“I think she's lovely,” Cullen says. Dorian's gut twists. Now Dorian thinks he might find her rather insipid. Wet. Wet eyed and wet behind the ears. “I know that you don't,” a vague hand gesture in place of a word. _Fancy? Fuck? Have-romantic-or-sexual-inclination-toward?_ “Women, but... Don't you think so?”

“I don't know. I mean, I suppose she's very _nice_. If you like nice girls – which I'm sure you do. Looks wise, though, she's a little...”

“A little what?”

“Goofy? Scrawny?” And Dorian knows he's being cruel. She has very prominent front teeth, and huge ears – the left one is flopped over and she's dreadfully self-conscious of it. She's much too pale, her hair is lank and her eyebrows are a mess. Even for an elf she's skinny, and she carries herself with a gangling inelegance which just screams how overtly aware of all this she is.

“That's... An unkind thing to say, Dorian,” Cullen says, gently reproachful. “She's not... Look, I know she's not the prettiest girl in the world, but she's... Sweet. Bright. Not every person has to be an oil painting to be worth desiring.”

Dorian's upbringing was very appearance focussed. Beautiful mother, handsome father, and that was about the only thing they seemed to like about each other. Some of his earliest memories were spent buried in the fine chiffon trains and sleeves of his mother's robes, listening to her and her friends laugh at how poorly dressed their peers were – how fat they'd gotten. But still, Dorian has almost always thought himself above this sort of thing, and that comment felt... Out of character. It tastes bitter in his mouth, and the look Cullen is giving him makes him feel five years old.

Dorian shrugs, rolls his eyes. “I'm being horribly shallow, aren't I? Maybe she'll improve as she gets older. Speaking of which: a bit young for you, isn't she?” Now that works. That has Cullen's lips twisting and his brow furrowing. A petty victory but a victory none the less. “Barely nineteen. And you're – what? Thirty two? Thirty three?”

“Er... Thirty four, actually.” Dorian knew that. Cullen scrapes a hand through his hair. “An age gap hardly seems to be stopping Blackwall.”

“Well if _Blackwall_ is going to be your moral measuring stick, then by all means, bed her.” Dorian snorts. Lavellan looks about twelve; southern men are such pigs.

“He is a Grey Warden,” says Cullen, swerving the matter of beds and bedding.

“Grey Warden or no, he's still a dirty old man. You clearly haven't had the treat that is Sera and Blackwall exchanging stories of past sexual conquests. He's filthy, they both are.” Dorian tries to keep it light. “Why bring it up, anyway? Have we been feeling a little lonely, Commander?”

Cullen gives him a wounded look, dark eyes catch amber in the firelight. “I've... lead rather a lonely life,” he says. _So have I!_ thinks Dorian, brightly.

“Oh, surely someone more age appropriate has caught your fancy,” pries Dorian. _I'm almost twenty five, you see, the gap’s enough to lift an eyebrow at, but at least I’m not a bloody teenager. You really do most of your growing up in your early twenties, anyway, don't you?_ “You know you've got all the tavern girls and half your soldiers chomping at the bit when you're out in the yard training.” This is barely even an exaggeration. While indulging in some perfectly reasonable day drinking, Dorian has over heard the barmaids squealing over the Commander, their noses pressed against the windows like little girls outside of a sweetshop.

“Nonsense,” says Cullen. “I... I may have noticed some,” he struggles to find the word. “Looks. Some looks, from some of my men, but I'm sure it's just a... Filial affection. Many of them have never served in an army before. Even I was a little star-struck around my first Commander.”

 _Cock-struck, more like._ Dorian wants to say it aloud, but he doesn't. Softly softly, and all that. He can hardly talk to anyone about being cock-struck as it stands.

“I remember over hearing my mother's handmaiden raising concern to my father about my relationship with my tutor when I was fifteen. My tutor was only eighteen – back for summer break from the Circle in... I want to say, Qarinus? The handmaiden told Father we were awfully close, and she was concerned about my tutor's intentions – that he might take advantage. And my father laughed and said it was completely innocent.” He shifts into an uncanny impression his father that Cullen couldn’t possibly appreciate. “Yes, Dorian might hero-worship the lad a little, but it hardly means there's something untoward going on!”

Dorian smiles at the memory. Gaius had dark, wavy hair, sherry coloured skin, and the blackest eyelashes Dorian had ever seen (he inspired the kohl, actually). Dorian was half in love after their first lesson, and convinced they were going to run off to Qarinus together and live in sin, happily ever after. “Of course, the handmaiden didn't mention she'd actually caught him bending me over one of father's lovely oak desks,” Dorian laughs. “We were at it for months.”

When they finally got caught (just kissing, thankfully) Gaius was sent packing, and Dorian felt like the entire world had ended. To think, there was literally a _blight_ on, and Dorian spent half of it locked up in his rooms, blubbering over a boy.

Gaius never did write him back. It hardly matters now (but it still stings a bit).

“Well I'm not _at it_ with any of my soldiers,” snorts Cullen.

“Obviously. The moral of that story is that it's very easy to mistake a person's patent romantic feelings for some innocent fraternal adoration.” Dorian pauses. “Plus, I like telling it. I think it sounds like something out of a dirty book.”

Cullen chuckles. “What happened to your tutor?”

“Oh you know how it is at that age.” Cullen probably doesn't, to be fair to him. “We were a bit bored of each other by the end of the summer, and then when he went back to his circle, we just... Forgot about each other, I suppose. Which is less like something out of a dirty book, and quite dull, really,” Dorian says, nonchalant. He adds a wistful sigh for effect. “Maybe you should try it on with one of your soldiers. Give the lucky girl or boy an education, then send them off into the world chocked full of stories about their torrid affair with the Commander of the Inquisition.”

“That sounds like a dirty book as well.”

“I have a gift.”

Dorian tosses the flask back to Cullen, and watches him take a long drink. “You said girl _or_ boy,” he says suddenly. “Why? I've never given any inclination.”

“I tend not to make assumptions, Commander. You don't give much inclination either way, to be honest. This apparent fondness for Lavellan is the first indication you've ever given me of your preferences, and I wasn't about to assume they were exclusive, right off the bat.” Dorian shrugs. “Haven't you ever? Felt the inclination to try, I mean.” Cullen shakes his head, hides his mouth behind the flask. “Well... Would you like to? To try it.”

And that's bold. So bold Dorian's surprised he's said it. He knows the south is not like home and he is no longer confined to long held looks and coded speech. But still, the way Cullen's eyebrows shoot up and he half chokes on his liquor sends a trickle of panic through Dorian. He forces a laugh.

“What? Generally?” asks Cullen. “Or... Erm.” Cullen clears his throat and takes another swig from the flask. He sets it down and slides it along the floor to Dorian, the metal clattering, hollow and bouncing a little on the rough stone work. Dorian leaves the flask be and shuffles position slightly, legs casually splayed, shoulders back, confidence and poise and all that shit.

“That is up to you,” Dorian says. Cullen doesn't even look at him, face pink, eyes darting all over the kitchen. Dorian chuckles, as if it's Cullen who's the idiot, here. “For goodness' sake, never mind. You look like a radish – forget I said anything.”

Cullen chews his lip and nods. Dorian casually changes the subject.

*

Dorian has a fairly good view of the grounds from his chair in the library. It is early evening, and most of Skyhold is settled in the hall for dinner. Lavellan is walking with Blackwall and has been for some time. He towers over her, and she walks with her shoulders hunched up to her ears, leaning into him, just a little. On four separate occasions Blackwall has moved to put his arm around her shoulders, or his hand on her waist, and every time he's ended up folding his arms over his chest.

“Get on with it,” Dorian hisses, to their faraway figures.

Lavellan, seemingly spurred by Dorian's distant impatience, stops Blackwall in his tracks, and steps in front of him. She steps forward, he steps back (Dorian doesn't knock angrily on the glass, because he wasn't raised in a barn and they probably wouldn't hear him any way) and this little dance repeats itself thrice. They appear to be... Not arguing, but disagreeing. Lavellan finally seems to give up, nodding, slumping and walking dejectedly back to the front entrance of the castle.

Dorian has visions of it: Lavellan traipsing through the rotunda to Cullen's office and batting tearful, dinner-plate eyes at him. Cullen will melt, fold her into his strong arms and make passionate, sweaty, inter-species love to her. Or something along those lines – Dorian did always have a rather over-active imagination. He slumps in his chair, defeated, but already telling himself it's probably for the best, blahblahblah, values his friendship with Cullen, etcetera, etcetera.

He takes a last, hopeful, glance out of the window, to find Lavellan and Blackwall locked in a tender embrace. She trembles, her face is buried in his chest, and her arms are locked tight around his middle as if she's afraid he might vanish. Blackwall practically has to lift her up to manage it, but there's a passionate kiss, and Dorian sits back in his chair, feeling awfully, awfully smug.

*

Dorian genuinely doesn't like to be the bearer of bad news, so he lets Cullen hear by word of mouth. The Skyhold rumour mill works swiftly (especially rumours regarding the Inquisitor herself), and just three days after witnessing the kiss, Dorian finds Cullen in his office in an utterly foul mood.

Dorian arrives on the heels of one of Cullen's officers, and waits outside while he verbally eviscerates her. Her supposed crimes hardly seem to fit the punishment. Cullen is furious over some cock-up with the guard rotations. Apparently this is the third time the woman has made this particular mistake – Cullen threatens demotion, questions her ability to cope with a lieutenant's role, and is overall far too harsh. She emerges after ten minutes, face bright red and shaking with rage. She doesn't even look at Dorian, merely stomps across the battlements and down the stairs to the courtyard, where she throws her sheathed sword on the ground and jumps up and down for a bit.

Dorian tentatively enters the room, knocking on the door as he slips around it. Cullen is behind his desk, rubbing his temples and muttering to himself.

“What?” he snaps.

“And a hello to you, too!” Dorian replies, brightly. “Just wondering if you were free for a game? I can come back later... Is something the matter?”

“Nothing. Stupid mistakes with the guard rotation, little annoyances,” Cullen mutters. “Close the door, please. Lock it, in fact, I think I've earned a break.”

“I'm shocked. I had this speech prepared, about how you have to take a break, and you're not a shark. Which is a sort of big, deadly fish that lives in the sea near Tevinter,” Dorian says as he clicks the lock on Cullen's door. He cross the room to lock the other. “They die if they stop moving.”

“I know what a shark is. I do read, Dorian,” Cullen complains. “Chess set's upstairs, by the way. Before you start tearing my office to bits.”

Dorian snaps the second lock shut and smirks to himself. “Am I being invited to the _boudoir_?”

“If you must call it that. Go up and sort the board out, I'll be a minute.”

Dorian climbs the ladder and spots the chess board immediately, a half played game set up on the floor, at the foot of the bed, as if Cullen has been playing himself. Dorian wouldn't put it past him; he knows Cullen doesn't get much sleep.

“Aren't you sick of chess?” Dorian calls. “I've a pack of cards in my quarters. Oh! Bull just got a board for Ataash, which is this dreadfully complicated Qunari board game, which-”

“Chess is just fine, Dorian,” Cullen replies. “There's brandy in my end table.”

So there is. “No glasses? Very classy, Commander. Oh! And it's _Ferelden_ , you do spoil me!”

“Yes, yes, Ferelden alcohol is terrible, very funny. Original, too. I shall bate my breath for the inevitable dog jokes,” Cullen says. He tosses two tin cups up to the attic, which land perilously close to Dorian's fingers.

He takes the cups and the bottle over to the chess set, which he has dragged closer to the bed, so they'll have something to lean against. Cullen does not, apparently, want to go down to the gardens or the library, or anywhere with chairs. Dorian knows that the soldiers know that a locked door means the Commander is not to be disturbed, and the sudden realisation of the deliberate privacy of it hits Dorian like a shot of good whisky. He grins to himself, and sets up the chess board, fingers quaking ever-so-slightly with anticipation.

This, he understands. This, is how it works between men, when you aren't paying for it. There is no simple telling, no blatant flirtation done in full seriousness; there is the fabrication of a convenient situation and advantage to be taken. Dorian will drink, Cullen will drink, and Dorian will wait, till the air is just thick enough, and eye contact has been held for a moment too long. Then a suggestion – just a suggestion – but enough for Cullen to know the option is certainly still there. Dorian fills the cups with a generous measure of brandy and Cullen ascends the ladder a moment later, free of his armour, in only his leathers and a loose shirt. He thumps down next to the board, and spins it gently so white faces him.

He's so bloody predictable. Dorian would bet a sovereign he'll open with the Queen's Gambit.

“I've don't think I've ever seen you so scantily clad,” says Dorian.

“Not all of us like having our chests half out all the time.”

“In my defence, I've only really a bare shoulder. Varric and Bull, now they're the real offenders.” Dorian wiggles said naked shoulder for effect, and Cullen's eyes linger. Oh, they both know exactly what's going to happen here, don't they?

Cullen sips his brandy and there it is: the beginnings of the Queen's gambit.

“Oh, pawn to D4, I wonder what this could be?” Dorian rolls his eyes, and moves his knight to F6, with a flourish.

“Going for a Marshall defence, are we?” Cullen hums. “You're not the only one that knows the moves.”

“I know!” Dorian snorts. “You know you actually get _pissy_ whenever I decline your gambit.”

“It's rude of me, isn't it. And after I declined yours the other night,” Cullen looks at Dorian over the lip of his cup, and Dorian suppresses a smirk.

“Well, well. I thought the cups would be empty and your king would be out before it was so much as mentioned.” He tries not to look too surprised because, honestly, he wasn't expecting Cullen to throw the first punch. Perhaps Dorian should take him to the infirmary, check he hasn’t been struck by a temperature.

“But you _did_ think I'd mention it.”

Dorian shrugs. Cullen's pawn moves to E5, and Dorian's knight has it. “They say curiosity is the lust of the mind.”

Cullen moves his queen straight forward in answer to Dorian's knight, forcing him to retreat back. His smile falters, and he drinks a little more brandy. “Maker forgive me, I can't keep up with this.” He colours, and hides his face behind his hand. Dorian pouts (White Queen to H3). “Tell me what you'd do with me.”

Dorian scoffs (Black Pawn to G5) “ _Do_ with you. I don't have everything planned, you know? I'm hardly as devious as everyone seems to think I am,” Dorian admits. That seems to set Cullen at ease, a little. “I don't know what I'd do specifically. I suppose I just want to... Help? You seem frustrated – lonely. You said as much. For the time being, if you'd like, I can supply you with company... an education, I suppose. And way to relieve your frustrations. No strings attached – apart from our continued friendship, of course.” Dorian smiles over at Cullen warmly, who is looking down at the chess board and rolling his queen between his thumb and his forefinger. He takes too long to answer, and Dorian's face starts to burn. He's never quite offered himself like this – even with the pretence of friendship and charity he might as well have sat on a silver platter – and the fear starts: Cullen might say no.

Dorian's never dealt with rejection well; he takes a generous, pre-emptive mouthful of brandy.

“All right,” Cullen says. “I... Thank you? I suppose for offering, I...” Cullen swallows. Maker, it's like he's trying to spit something up, the effort it takes to get the words out. “I admit, I have been curious. About men. Not about you specifically, until you put the thought in my head.”

Sewing seeds: Dorian's always been good at that.

“You've thought of me?” Dorian asks in a low voice.

“Obviously, I... Oh! You mean... Ah. I suppose. Once or twice.” Cullen just drains his cup then, his queen lies forgotten in the middle of the chessboard. “And you?”

 _Virtually every time I have a moment to get my sweaty little hands down my trousers,_ thinks Dorian, with absolutely no intention of admitting it to anyone ever.

“In passing, of course. You're a very attractive man, why wouldn't I?”

Cullen laughs uncomfortably. When he finally looks at Dorian he is bright red and Dorian lightly offers to fetch him a drink of water.

“I started off so well,” sighs Cullen. “I've... I've been thinking about this for a couple of days. I decided... The next time I saw you I would...” he clears his throat. His lips are prickled pink from the brandy. They're wet too, and Dorian badly wants to kiss them, has thought about kissing them a hundred times. “We should discuss... Terms.”

Dorian gives a loud 'Ha!' at that. “It isn't a military operation, you know? I've laid out my rules, if you have any.”

“Okay. I... I don't want to do anything too... Odd,” Cullen mutters. Dorian resists the urge to tell him that he is not some sort of _deviant_ (the phrase “I am not the Iron Bull,” comes to mind), merely interested in men. “And... Perhaps we shouldn't kiss on the mouth.”

“I was about to suggest the same thing myself,” Dorian says, evenly.

 

*

That first night, they do not do anything. Cullen seems to have spent himself plotting and scheming and actually getting the words out. He says he wanted too, but he has had a long day, and fears he is too exhausted to manage it at the moment. Dorian leans across the chessboard and touches his thigh. Cullen knows where he will be, and that his door is always open.

*

Of course, Lavellan needs him. Two days, Dorian has seen neither hide nor hair of Cullen. His ears prick up at the opening of the rotunda's door, and he wriggles petulantly into his chair as he hears Lavellen's voice. She greets Solas in Elvish and they chatter for a while, Solas far more civil with Lavellan than he's even been with Dorian. Maker, Dorian does not want to feel jealous of Lavellan's friendship with _Solas_ of all people but... Well, Dorian only wants to chat with someone about magic for a bit, he doesn't expect Solas to be his best friend, just...

Dorian huffs into his chair. He half wonders if Solas is trying to get into Lavellan's knickers as well, since it seems like such a running theme among the Elderly Bachelors of Skyhold nowadays.

Dorian hears the pitter-patter of Lavellan's bare feet on the stairs, and she greets him a moment later, pink cheeked and freckled, flashing Dorian an extraordinarily toothy grin. She smooths her hair (which is loose, today) over her sad, floppy ear.

“Hullo!” she says. “D'you ever move from here?”

“No. I might if there was a fire, but otherwise,” he shrugs. “Is there anything I can do you for, Inquisitor?”

“No. Well. Yeah, but. I mean. There's a thing I need you to come and do with me in Redcliffe in a couple of weeks or something – mage stuff? Um. Apart from that I just wanted to know how you was n' that, if you're settled, 'cause I knew you was feeling a bit down and people was being funny with you. 'Specially, um. Blackwall n' Solas. I talked to 'em both an' Blackwall says he's gunna start trying to be nicer but Solas was just like... He made a face,” rambles Lavellan.

“Ah, thank you for that but. Sorry, what was that about Redcliffe?”

“Er... I reckon I need to sort details but yeah I'll get back to you but. Yeah. We need to go, 'cause of some mage stuff,” she says. She gnaws her lip. “No, I'm lying, I'm a big liar it's not mage stuff at all, well, as far as most Tevinter stuff is mage stuff, it _is_ mage stuff, but it's not? Hang on.” She pulls a crumpled note from her pocket. “Mother Giselle got this and she says not to tell you but it's from your Da so why wouldn't I tell you? I didn't get it. He wants to meet you, well. Send someone to meet you? Just read the note maybe.”

Dorian sets down his book and takes the damp note from Lavellan's clammy fist.

He recognises his father's penmanship instantly, and he feels as if the bottom has dropped out of his stomach.

Lavellan asks him to set the meeting date, and he asks for a few weeks to prepare himself. That suits Lavellan fine, because she needs to “pop” to Val Royeaux with Josephine, and yes, Dorian is sure he doesn't want to come as well. He thanks her for the offer, anyway.

He feels he might regret doing so, but he burns the note. Watches it blacken in his fingers and break off into the air, like dandelion seeds in a strong breeze.

*

Dorian has just, to slight inconvenience, removed his leathers, when a soft knock comes at the door of his quarters. He arrived in Ferelden with few clothes, and fewer possessions, so he's had to make do with the room.

It isn't bad, Dorian supposes. At first, he’d decorated it with scavenged paintings and rugs retrieved from about the castle, now the room is dominated by trinkets from his adventures with Lavellan and company. Books are dotted about the floor periodically – seemingly abandoned, but carefully placed so Dorian's place is saved and the pages won't be bent.

His leathers lain out on his desk for tomorrow, Dorian scrambles into his dressing gown. It is one item of a package of casual garments and under-things that arrived on Dorian's lap, unexpectedly one evening. It was gifted anonymously, after Dorian had complained loudly about having no clothes. He suspects Josephine's hand.

The dressing gown is silky and quilted, and Dorian ties it so it's open to just above the dip of his belly button (but not so much that it falls off his shoulders).

“Yes?” Dorian asks. He finds Cullen at his door, lightly dressed and staring at his shoes. It occurs to Dorian that Lavellan left for Val Royeaux this morning. _Maker forbid she suspected Commander Cullen of consorting with the Magister_ , Dorian thinks briefly, bitterly. Cullen is happy to be his friend, in public, of course, but... Well, Dorian supposes everyone knowing you're the Magister's friend and everyone knowing the Magister is sucking your cock are two different matters entirely. Not that Dorian _is_ a Magister, or sucking Cullen's cock. Not yet, to the latter, anyway.

“Good evening,” says Cullen. “May I come in?”

Dorian waves him through, then bolts shut the door.

“Can I help you with something?”

Cullen nods, his eyes flick to the bare line of Dorian's chest, then over to the fire. He steps toward Dorian, hands shaking badly and much too pale.

“Are you alright?” Dorian asks. He presses his palm to Cullen's forehead and finds it a little cold and a little clammy. Cullen shakes his head, slowly.

“It’s… Your Templars don't use Lyrium, do they?” Cullen asks. Dorian shakes his head, and removes his hand, wiping it discreetly on his dressing gown. Cullen steps past him and sits on the bed, rubbing his temples and a large hand over his face.

“You know, that's absolutely awful for you, if you're not a mage,” Dorian says. Cullen laughs, bitterly, and gives Dorian a brief overview of Lyrium use (abuse) in the Templar Order that has Dorian twisting his face and wanting to write angry letters to the Divine.  
Really, it's a cheek that Tevinter is painted out to be this Maleficar’s den of vice and cruelty when the South hardly seems much better at all.

“It can take years to leave your system fully. I've been off it for months and I'm still getting the aches and pains,” Cullen finishes. “Though today is a particularly bad day.”

Cullen looks up at Dorian, who is now painfully aware of the fact he is still standing and very much bare (well, beneath the dressing gown, anyway). Cullen seems to _want_ to touch him, but Dorian hates to make assumptions. He hates that they're not kissing on the mouth either, because it's just the obvious way to initiate this sort of thing. Especially with someone like Cullen, practically reeking of virginity, who would benefit greatly from the gentle introduction of a soft kiss.

“I'm sorry for the sudden change of subject, Cullen, but... You aren't a virgin, are you?”

Cullen shakes his head. “No, I’m not. Hardly an expert, or anything but… Well, I found lyrium caused me a degree of… dysfunction to put it delicately. Even if I wasn’t able to _perform_ it was not particularly often that I’d actually want to,” he mumbles. “The longer I was on it the worse it became and at the time I didn’t care much. One less distraction, as it was.  
“I must ask you to forgive my hesitance. Perhaps I should have explained all of this the other night. It’s odd for me to… To feel this way, again, after such a long time. And needless to say, it has been a while since I’ve… Since I’ve touched any one at all, really,” Cullen tells him, slowly, carefully. Dorian’s heart almost breaks for him; his stomach lurches. 

_To feel this way, again_ \- Dorian plays the sound of it back in head, pretends Cullen doesn’t mean what Dorian knows he does.

“You’re fine,” Dorian says, more to himself. “You’re in good hands.”

“I know.” Cullen looks up at him through his lashes and takes his hand. Cullen is so soft in the firelight, the tiny little hairs on his cheek and his ears lit gold. Dorian notices a spatter of freckles across the bridge of Cullen’s nose. He’s clean shaven, for once, and he smells faintly of bloody _lavender water_ , of all things.  
It’s like all of his edges are gone and it takes years off him. Does Cullen do this for every lover? Suddenly appear, after days of silence, deeply troubled and in a state of disarming vulnerability. 

Cullen’s thumb and forefinger meet comfortably upon the sharp bone of Dorian’s thin wrist. “Thank you for doing this.”

Oh this is awful. Dorian’s breath quivers at that, and he doesn’t even care that Cullen’s hands are sweaty. This is going to mean something to Dorian, and he should put a stop to it immediately.

Maker knows he isn’t going to, but he should. Ah well, it’s the thought that counts.

Cullen releases his wrist. “Can I?”

 _I don’t know, can you?_ Is what Dorian might have said, if he didn’t feel like he’d just had all of the air knocked out of him. He just nods, wordless, swallowing thickly, blood racing and rushing to his cock and his chest and certainly absolutely in the opposite direction from his brain or else he’d call this off.

 _Foolish_ Dorian, weak, foolish Dorian; Cullen gently slots his big hands into Dorian’s dressing gown and sets them upon the narrow waist they find there. Any other man, Dorian would have climbed into his lap by now, but Dorian is afraid this is not any other man, so he lets Cullen set the pace. 

Cullen parts his legs, his fingers curl around Dorian’s flank and pull, and Dorian finds Cullen’s mouth on his stomach and the dressing gown falling from his shoulders, held on by its tie.

To be with someone so unused to the feel of another’s flesh is a novelty; it’s like discussing a beloved old book with a new reader - Cullen’s enthusiasm feeds Dorian’s. Though Cullen is just running his hands around Dorian’s back and his sides, kissing his belly with no intention of moving southward, Dorian is growing noticeably hard. 

He fears that this is why Cullen stops, suddenly.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he admits, laughing. Dorian laughs too, though his heart isn’t in it.

“Let me,” he says. He drops to his knees, and sets his palms flat on Cullen’s thick thighs. “Do you want my mouth?” he asks. Cullen’s only response is a small nod, and a soft puff of air. Dorian makes quick work of his belt and the laces of his trousers – usually, he would have teased, would have rubbed the length of the obvious bulge, mouthed it through the fabric but he doesn’t. He thinks he probably wants to taste Cullen more than Cullen wants sucking.

Dorian takes Cullen’s cock in hand and wets his lips; when he grins, Cullen splutters, tipping his hips and curling his fingers into the duvet.

It’s _barely_ in Dorian’s mouth when Cullen comes, with a half silent groan. Dorian swallows, and chooses to take it as a compliment rather than a slight disappointment. He’ll be back, surely, there’ll be more time.

Dorian wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and is unsure what to do with himself. He hardly expects Cullen to reciprocate, not tonight, and with Cullen panting and quaking above him like this, Dorian is extremely impressed he’s managed to resist touching himself, so far. 

“Cullen? As much as I hate to interrupt the afterglow, do you mind if I…?” Dorian gestures vaguely toward his crotch.

With Cullen, it’s as if a light has been flashed in his face, and the boneless, satisfied look to him dulls as he snaps his back up straight and immediately begins to tuck himself away.

“Ah, not at all. Do you… Want me to? Do anything?”

 _You take your shirt off, I’ll mount your leg and cry._ “No! No, no, I’m fine. If you could just, just stay as you are for a moment, actually, this won’t take very long.”

Well, it certainly takes longer than Cullen did. Dorian doesn’t quite mount Cullen’s leg, but he does drop his forehead onto Cullen’s thigh, unable to quash the whine that escapes him when a hand comes to stroke the back of his neck. He comes onto the rug, whispering Cullen’s name and awash with self-pity. 

Cullen laughs, awkwardly. “Perhaps, next time, I’ll last a little longer.”

Dorian nods, still shuddering, nuzzling Cullen’s leg. “Next time.”

 

*

One minute Dorian is storming out of the tavern, boiling with rage, and the next, he is sitting in the dirt, crumpled into his knees, trying to hold back a scream. He did well for not crying then, and he does well for not crying now. He hears Lavellan drop down next to him, and she winds a skinny arm around his shoulders. She doesn’t say anything, but if the snivelling is anything to go by, she’s doing the crying for him.

“What?” he asks, “What’s the matter with you?” 

She doesn’t answer him, just hugs him tighter and buries her face into his shoulder. She rocks him like a child, and she weeps like one. That is all they are, really. 

She whispers “Shh, shh.”

Back at the camp, Blackwall gathers Lavellan into his arms and takes her to their tent. If they fuck they’re extremely quiet about it; all Dorian hears that night is low voices and the odd hiccough.

“How was it?” asks Bull. Dorian turns to him with red eyes and smeared kohl. “Bad, huh? Well, if there’s anything I can do.”

“Thanks,” Dorian says, intentionally, and perhaps unfairly, curt. For once, Bull sounds as if he really isn’t making some sort of odd sexual advance. “Lavellan seems to be taking it harder than I am,” Dorian adds, a shade disdainful. Bull does nothing to indicate that he catches a bitterness on Dorian’s voice, but Dorian imagines he does. Very little seems to get past the Iron Bull.

“She found out her clan got massacred yesterday,” Bull says, flatly. “She’s got family – adopted, but still. No word from them.”

“Ah,” says Dorian.

“Don’t beat yourself up. You didn’t know. I’d have been pissed with her too.”

Dorian picks up a rock just to throw it. 

*

 

Cullen does not even lift his head when Dorian enters, he seems to have recognised Dorian’s knock and his walk, however.

“How did it go?” he asks.

“It wasn’t as traumatic as the time I found out he was planning to use dangerous, experimental blood magic on me, but it’s hardly as treasured a memory as the day he brought home my first staff. Out of ten – one being blood magic, ten being the staff – I’d give a three.”

Then he does look up. “Dorian, I’m so sorry.”

“There’s little to be done,” Dorian says, waving his hand casually. Cullen’s brow is crinkled with genuine concern, though he does not set down his quill. “See me tonight? You don’t have to do anything, I’d just appreciate the company.”

“Of course.”

Cullen returns to his paperwork; Dorian returns to his library.

*

He drinks a tad too much and upends the chess set scrambling to his knees to open Cullen’s trousers.

*

 

Dorian imagines there are few people who can claim to have witnessed the assassination of an empress. He watches a Chevalier pick Celine’s bloodied body from the floor, carrying her across the ballroom like a bride. It strikes Dorian, suddenly, how petite she is (how petite she was, as the case may be) how dainty and frail her corpse looks, draped slackly across the arms of the chevalier.

It seems like a waste. All of it. It astounds Dorian that he has lived his entire life in ballrooms and finery and never once has it made him feel quite so profoundly _ill_ as it does now. Briala’s gotten to him, Lavellan’s gotten to him, Sera’s gotten to him, and he feels swathed with outrage and guilt and _helplessness_ because: what on earth can he do about it?

He’s not thinking about Orlais anymore. He’d wanted to do something before, but now he _must_. He must return to Tevinter, once this is over, and collapse it from the inside. He could ask Lavellan to speak to Briala, he can help her establish agents, he can help Sera establish agents, he can…

Well, for the moment he can pluck another glass of wine from a passing tray. The Empress is dead yet the party continues: Long Live Puppet Emperor Gaspard, etcetera. Lavellan trips over the hem of her skirt for the twenty seventh time on the way out to the balcony, curling her lip at the merrymakers and knocking back the liquor in her cup. 

She did reasonably well, actually, she only cried the once, and then just for twenty minutes or so. Dorian thinks Josephine shouldn’t have bothered trying to dress her up. 

(Cullen thunks his head weakly against the pillows, “She’s the bloody Inquisitor! I said to Josephine, she is the _Herald of Andraste_ , not one of your china dolls! Military regalia. I want us all in matching, formal military regalia and they’re going to bloody ignore me, as they _always_ bloody ignore me.”

“Mmhmm,” Dorian says, briefly considering his position on top of Cullen’s stomach, as well as his sanity. “Talking shop isn’t generally considered traditional foreplay, you know?”)

Their outfits are all very plain, by Orlesian standards, but Lavellan doesn’t even own a pair of shoes, never mind a fucking ball gown – she spent half the evening trying not to faint, or fall down. As Dorian can imagine few can claim to have witnessed the assassination of an empress, he also imagines few can claim to have seen a Dalish elf in a hoop skirt closing a fade rift with the assistance of a Grey Warden and the Enchanter to the Imperial Court.

Dorian sighs into his wine – the entire evening has been ridiculous. 

Dorian scans the half-empty ballroom for Cullen and spots him ducked in an inconspicuous corner. He is watching Lavellan out on the balcony, and Dorian watches him watching her. Blackwall steps up behind her, and she melts into his arms, and Cullen looks so _wounded_ that Dorian feels wounded on his behalf. It’s silly. It’s such an obvious case of a man wanting something just because he can’t have it, but Dorian feels he’s hardly in a position to judge, half-having and whole-wanting Cullen as he does.

Good booze, awful company and staring longingly at a man who’ll never want him – he might as well be back in Tevinter because this is all _painfully_ familiar. Granted, it’s much colder and the food is worse. He swallows the last of his wine and follows Cullen out onto the eastern balcony, where the Inquisitor and her paramour will no longer be in his line of sight. He’s leant on the stonework, gazing out onto the gardens and the horizon. 

“I think I owe Varric money,” Dorian sighs, leaning next to Cullen. He startles but smiles. “Well, more money. I bet Celine would win the day, he had his money on Ambassador Briala. I thought it was a bit out of the left field, but… I really should have learnt not to bet against him, by now.”

Cullen snorts. “Play him at chess. He’s dreadful.”

“But he cheats.”

“So do you.”

“Touché. You know, I played Solas the other day – I swapped out one of his pawns for a rook, he only noticed _after_ I’d checkmated him, and then he went all red, he was so angry. He looked like a tomato with a little angry face drawn on it.” It had been hilarious at the time, then Dorian had returned to his library nook one morning to find all of his books marked at the wrong pages. 

Cullen laughs. “Good,” he says. “It’s been a bloody long evening, hasn’t it?”

“Mm,” Dorian replies. “Josephine, in a rare lapse, has forgotten to tell me where my room is. I’ve been wanting to disappear for at least an hour, but she’s rather busy, as it stands.” Dorian shuffles ever-so-slightly closer to Cullen. He brushes the side of Cullen’s palm with his little finger, which earns him (after a slightly defeated sigh Dorian chooses to ignore) a wry smile.

“I suppose one sleepover won’t kill us,” he says, slurring a bit.

“Certainly not. It’ll be fun. I could even sweet talk one of the servants to giving me a bottle of wine,” Dorian says, in a singsong voice. Cullen smiles, and pushes himself off the stone, stumbling as he does.

“I’ve had quite enough for the evening, I think,” he says. The nobles buzzing around him like a pack flies had probably been tipping drink down his throat all night. 

They set off for the guest wing, Cullen tripping now and again in his pointy, formal boots, complaining that he’d rather have stayed in an inn, with his soldiers, than the palace itself (“I just feel like I’m going to have my throat cut in my bed or something – don’t you?”). Dorian isn’t sure – he’s never been to Halamshiral, but he’s heard the majority of the city is a slum, just one huge, overcrowded alienage. The thought of it makes his lip curl a little, and he hates that it does, but there it is – he supposes it takes more than good intention to knock out all of that deeply imbued Altus classism. 

The guest wing is massive, lavish, and Cullen says his room is right at the end of the corridor. Dorian stops off at the Inquisitor’s room to pick up his overnight bag, and is roped into helping Blackwall dislodge her from her corset (“It’s like the bloody thing’s welded on!” Blackwall says, thick fingers struggling with fine ribbons and little hooks,) and manages to loosen it enough for them to finish the job for themselves. They thank him, and Blackwall enquires briefly as to how Dorian learnt to loosen lady’s clothing. Dorian shrugs and exits, rather than divulging that he was often tasked to help mother get started on removing her more complex outfits. It was only ever after the longer parties, when she’d refuse to wake her house girl at such a time, but… Dorian is well aware it’s a little odd.

Cullen is waiting dutifully at the door with a little frown on his face. “She needed help with her dress,” Dorian supplies, intentionally omitting Blackwall’s presence.

“Ah,” says Cullen. “I still think we should have gone with the matching military regalia. But you look… Very? Er… Nice?” stammers Cullen. 

Dorian is _still_ lacking much by way of clothing (unthinkable for him just a year ago) but Vivienne was kind enough to drag a handful of tailors and dressmakers to Skyhold. One of them was prepared to negotiate in order to make something Dorian wouldn’t find completely aesthetically hideous. It’s refreshing to wear something that hasn’t been tailored for combat or travel – it feels like it’s been months since he wore something that wasn’t made almost entirely of leather. 

“I think I look _especially_ handsome,” huffs Dorian. 

At first he’d asked for silks and other frippery, but had been firmly reminded they were going to the _Winter_ Palace in southern Orlais, not a summer party in Minrathous. He’s ended up in all black – which he likes. He wears a well-made wool shirt, with a high collar and gold fastenings and piping – rather striking against the dark material. His trousers are high in the waist and tight on his backside and his thighs (Dorian wanted them tighter, the tailor had merely rolled her eyes) and he’s been made pair of very fine, very high black boots, which Dorian had practically salivated at when they were unveiled to them. Topped off with a handsome jacket in the Tevinter style, he certainly felt he’d given the whisperers something to whisper about.

“Look at my boots,” he says. “Aren’t they fantastic? And didn’t the tailor do such a fine job with the jacket?” Dorian tweaks the jackets lapels and wiggles his leg for effect – which makes Cullen laugh but little else.

“Yes, I’m positively boiling over with jealousy,” he chuckles. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t pout. I’ll give your tailor a medal when we get home, how about that?”

 _Just pat my head and tell me I’m pretty,_ Dorian thinks, huffily. Can Cullen even give medals? He has this cheeky smile on his face that Dorian just wants to kiss off. “You’re such a shit sometimes, do you know that?” Dorian tells him, fondly. Cullen pokes out his tongue – this is apparently a rude gesture in the south, which Dorian hadn’t been aware of until at least the eighth time Sera did it to him. “Cullen Stanton Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisition, former Knight Commander of Kirkwall, drunk, tripping over his shoes and sticking out his tongue.” 

Cullen’s answer to this is to repeat what Dorian said in a silly, high pitched approximation of Dorian’s voice. Sometimes, it is so painfully obvious he is one of four children. It is a crime how rarely he behaves like this – silly, jolly. Perhaps Dorian should get him a bit tipsy more often. Dorian wants to frown, play the straight man, but he just collapses into giggles. 

“I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed yourself this evening,” Dorian says.

“This evening, has been one of the worst of my life, I think. And I say that as someone who was present at the Kirkwall rebellion, the Sacking of Haven and the collapse of the Ferelden Circle of Magi,” Cullen grins. “It gets to a point where all you can do is laugh. Though I suppose I must say, the company has cheered me up.” Dorian smiles, bright and toothy, face aching a little with it. “I have to say, whenever I saw you this evening, you looked like you’d rather be anywhere else. In your posh clothes and everything – I thought you’d be in your element.”

Dorian wrinkles his nose at that. “Well, I enjoy the drinking and eating and talking to fascinating and delightful strangers, but I have to say, I’m not the biggest fan of webs of lies and political intrigue. I’d hope you’d noticed by now, but I’m rather a friendly sort of chap and the backstabbing – literal and metaphorical – starts to get exhausting,” Dorian says. He tries not to show how insulting that presumption, but the anger starts to bubble in his belly. 

Oh yes, the Game is just grand, if you haven’t a shred of decency or pity – if you’ve no regard for anyone beyond yourself or your own personal gain. Dorian’s been a victim of it before. A rival Magister to his father had paid a prostitute to seduce Dorian at a party, then threatened to “release the information”. Father had been enraged – he’d had to call in so many favours to make it go away, and then the marriage issue was mentioned at every opportunity. The incident had effectively served as a catalyst for father’s dalliance into blood magic rituals, but even before then, it had bothered Dorian for months. Someone was effectively prepared to tear his life apart just because he was related to the wrong person and the _nastiness_ of it, the _inhumanity_ was sickening. 

 

Dorian begins snapping. “If I didn’t find the, the lies and cruelty of the Game grotesque I’d still be in Tevinter. I’d have played along – I’d be married to some poor woman, who’d be doomed to spend the rest of her life coping with ugly rumours about her husband’s _proclivities_ , while I miserably went from brothel to brothel and boy to boy trying to pretend it was enough and…” he trails off. He feels his throat tighten and he knows the alcohol has begun talking now. “Suffice to say, my dear Cullen, _no_. I was not in my element here.”

Cullen clears his throat. He’s looking at Dorian with those awful, kicked puppy-dog eyes. “I didn’t mean to offend,” he says. Dorian sighs.

“A forgivable misjudgement of my character,” he grins, but his heart’s not in it. Cullen is still looking sadly at him. “As I said, I do enjoy the drinking and eating. And the chatting, of course.”

They reach Cullen’s door a moment later, and Dorian sets his bag down at the foot of the indescribably huge and elaborate four-poster bed. Cullen closes the door, and clears his throat again. With his hands behind his back, he stares Dorian dead in the eye.

“I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I thought you were… Like them. Or like the way people think you are, at all,” he says. Cullen, for all his bluntness and occasional thickness, can be quite astute, when he wants to be. “And I must say… I really do appreciate… You.”

A bitter voice rises briefly in Dorian’s head, _is this a roundabout way of telling me I give just the best blowjobs? Or…_ , but it is quickly quashed by boyish optimism. 

“You’re a very funny drunk, you know? Am I your _best mate_ as well?” Dorian chides. He can’t decide if he wants Cullen to continue. Dorian knows when he’s edging into dangerous territory with men, and he has not so much edged with Cullen as he has pathetically stumbled.

“I’m serious,” Cullen says. “A lot of people, coming from the life you had, would have looked at what was happening in Tevinter and buried their head in the sand. It took a lot of courage to stand up to that. I was lead here by circumstance – my whole life, really, has been one circumstance after another, but you _chose_ to do something. You’re trying. Anyone who spends longer than five minutes with you knows how hard you’re trying, and you deserve a lot of credit for that, frankly. And-”

Dorian cuts him off with a kiss (on the bloody mouth, because he’s just too far gone to care) rough and raw, desperate hands clawing at Cullen’s shirt. He kisses back, hands slipping under Dorian’s jacket to rest on his waist, and he’s so happy he feels like breaking something. Cullen pulls off his mouth, but doesn’t pull away, bumping the round tip of his nose against Dorian’s cheek.

“Dorian…” he mumbles, unsure. Still, he doesn’t pull away. 

“Just, let me.” 

Cullen kisses clumsily, and tastes of red wine. His lips are dry but soft, and he seems to learn as he goes. Dorian savours it, commits Cullen’s mouth to memory: the heavy breaths through his nose, the taste, the tentative swipes of his tongue. 

Their clothes mark a trail from the door to the bed, and Dorian notes this is the first time they’ve been completely naked together. Usually trousers are unlaced, but stay on, or Dorian is undressed and Cullen is clothed. Maker, with the kissing and the bare skin it almost feels _real_. Cullen cards his big fingers through Dorian’s hair, as he pulls him into his lap. He breaks from Dorian’s lips to work at his neck, and Dorian might as well melt for how he collapses into Cullen, looping shaking arms, and holding a cry in his throat.

It is an odd thing, to feel loved in an instant but know, in his heart, he is not. This moment of emotional discrepancy will be glossed over come dawn. Dorian will pretend to be horribly embarrassed by his behaviour, Cullen will be stiff and uncommunicative, and they will not speak until they return to Skyhold, and Cullen feels needy enough to come to him. It’s a dance Dorian knows well enough. One day, perhaps, he will be in a position to get what he wants, till then, he is happy to take what he can get.

He realises, in that moment – his fingers toying with Cullen’s soft little ears, lips gentle and wet at his throat – he just wants Cullen to be happy. Dorian has heard bits and bobs about his life before the Inquisition, and it all sounds so miserable and monastic. At least Dorian has had his own escapes (his books, his boozes, his brothels), his moments of happiness and delusion found in flesh and at the bottom of various bottles. He’s had his work and his magic too. For all his ups and downs his life has never been devoid of _pleasure_ in the way that Cullen’s seems to have been. Dorian is so glad to give it to him. Privileged, to give him what every single person who wants it deserves to have. 

Dorian loves him. Without jealousy and without a shred regard for himself, or common sense, he loves Cullen. 

They find a jar of slick strategically placed in the drawer of the bedside table, next to an unabridged copy of the Chant and a small knife (which may be the most Orlesian thing Dorian has ever seen). 

Cullen watches Dorian prepare himself – he has this glaring voyeuristic streak he’s awfully embarrassed about – with wide, dark eyes and a heaving chest.

They fuck face to face, Dorian in Cullen’s lap, clinging to Cullen’s shoulders, his neck, and his face as he pulls them together for more desperate, finite kisses. 

 

*

Dorian has approximately ten minutes to enjoy waking up, naked and curled into Cullen’s chest. The hard light of the dawn fills the unfamiliar room, and the unfamiliar mattress is feather soft beneath them. Its _cosy_ , warm and it smells of skin and sweat but it is not at all unpleasant.

Cullen wakes with a grumble then a groan, and promptly pulls away from Dorian.

“I had far too much to drink last night,” he says, rough-voiced, squinting at the sunlight. He rushes to his overnight bag, and once his trousers are on, he tosses Dorian’s over and it hits the bed with an unceremonious thump. 

“You weren’t the only one,” mumbles Dorian. It was foolish of him. But what hasn’t been foolish of him, of late. “… I’m sorry, if I got a little… Carried away?” he tries sheepishly. He dresses as quickly as Cullen. 

“It’s fine,” he replies, not snapping, but clearly annoyed. 

“I… It won’t happen again, I promise. It was just. A stressful evening, and you were being very nice to me and-” 

Cullen waves his hand. “Dorian, it’s fine,” he says. 

And that’s that. They join the others for breakfast.

*

Blackwall vanishes before they leave for Skyhold. Lavellan has a letter crumpled in her fist, red eyes and a runny nose. A search of their room uncovers a note missing from Leliana’s reports (tossed _next_ to the fire but not actually _in_ it) and their course is set for Val Royeaux. 

 

*

 

Josephine sets them up, for the night, in the guesthouse of a family friend. It is a little way outside the city, with room enough for all of them. Leliana and Cullen return to Skyhold to make arrangements for Rainier’s “release” from prison. 

Lavellan shutters herself in the master bedroom the moment they arrive. It is another blow she doesn’t need, and Dorian feels guilty that he’s here instead of… Varric or Bull or someone she likes more, or is better at _feelings_. Someone who isn’t a human, he thinks, would help too. He and Vivienne have one of their scant proper conversations (one of the ones where they’re serious and civil – no one makes a cutting comment about anyone’s clothes or Antivans) in the drawing room over wine. They express that they both wish someone else was here – not for their sake, but for her’s.

Josephine joins them a little later, brow furrowed and eyes a little watery. “I think we should leave her for a while,” she says, “But someone should check on her in a bit.”

They go in shifts. As the daylight begins to die, Vivienne takes her dinner, ascending the stairs with two plates awkwardly balanced in the crook of her arm. She approaches this more gingerly than Dorian has seen her approach dragons; he wonders if Vivienne has ever taken any one their dinner before.

Dorian’s turn comes before bedtime. Early, as they’re off back to Skyhold in the morning. 

The door is ajar, but he knocks any way. “Inquisitor?”

“Dorian.” She’s sat in the window box, looking up at the moon. 

“I was sent to ask if you want to stay alone or in one of our rooms,” he says. She shakes her head. “Alright. Well, our doors are open. Should I go?”

She tips her head to the bed. “Nah, sit for a bit,” she says. So Dorian perches on the mattress, not quite sure what to do with his hands.  
“I’m not… I mean I’m not the best at words and you know I’m not ‘cause you’ve had to speak to me before. But I’ve been sat here trying to work out how I’m feeling and I can’t think of the word?” Lavellan mutters. Her voice is rough, listless. “I was thinking betrayed but it’s stronger and sicker than that. ‘Cause. I mean, he wasn’t the first man I ever let fuck me or nothing but he might as well have been, you know?”

Dorian winces. “I think you want _violated_.”

“Yeah. Yeah that’s it. Violated,” she swallows thickly and wets her lips. “Dunno what I’m gunna do with him once they’ve got him back. ‘Cause I was just gonna leave him but then I couldn’t. Daft as it is, and daft me, I still love him, you know? I don’t even know who he is and I still love him.” She drops her head into her knees, and Dorian fears she’s going to start crying, but she doesn’t. “I mean - not judgement. I’ve already decided he’s going to the Wardens once this is done. I mean like, with me and him, you know? ‘cause he’s gunna be hanging round, I might still take him out on stuff, and… Well, you know men, don’t you? You must have been fucked around a bit coming from where you do and being how you are. What’d you do, in my position I mean?”

“I’ve never had a lover assume a false identity or commit a hangable offense, but, I suppose I’ve been fucked around before, yes.” What Dorian is about to say feels very hypocritical, given his current situation. His mother had a saying – do as I say, don’t do as I do. “I think, if you have any self-respect, you’d never take him back.”

He slips his hand under his collar and thumbs a love-bite.

“Yeah. Josie’s said the same thing to me, more or less, ‘n’ so’s Vivienne,” she sighs. Then she looks at him. Her hair is unbrushed, though her face is swollen, her eyes are wild and too bright. “No offense to you personal, Dorian, and the others, ‘cause I like all of you plenty and everything. But if every shemlen just fucked off somewhere else, an’ took their piss wars and their shit nobility and their piss chantry with them, I think I’d be really happy.”

Dorian gives a sad chuckle, which she answers with a sadder smile. 

“I hardly blame you.”

*

Cullen is staring up at Dorian’s ceiling. He stays longer now. It’s nice. They talk, sometimes they have a drink, occasionally (charitably) Cullen will throw a bare arm across Dorian’s shoulders. 

Dorian is pulling on his dressing gown, and Cullen is sipping from a cup of whisky with a thoughtful look on his face.

“Should I get her flowers?” he asks.

Dorian does not roll his eyes, but his heart starts to beat a little faster. “Who, Lavellan?” He sits at the opposite end of the bed and props himself against the wall, taking a second cup from Cullen’s large, rough hand. “I don’t think she’d appreciate it,” Dorian says.

“Why not?” 

Dorian doesn’t care for Cullen’s tone. 

“I just… I had a talk with her during the Blackwall incident. It was a while ago, granted, but I really don’t think she’d like that from you. From any human man,” Dorian says gently. _She’ll hate you,_ thinks Dorian, _she’ll think you’re a pig when you’re just an idiot._

“I’m not expecting her to… It’s not necessarily a romantic gesture, I just… I think it’ll be nice for her to have flowers, from a nice man, who cares about her,” Cullen mumbles. He looks embarrassed now, but there’s a quiet determination to him. Dorian raises his eyebrows.

“Well, let the record show I have advised against it.”

There’s a silence. They both sip, but Dorian can hear the cogs in Cullen’s head turning. 

“You’re not jealous, are you?” he asks. 

“No?” Dorian replies, immediately. He really isn’t. If he was jealous, he’d encourage Cullen to take the poor girl those flower, because he knows exactly what she’ll do with them. Cullen hums. “I’m not!” Dorian insists. And then Cullen – and Dorian is not sure what exactly it is about this that infuriates him so – raises his eyebrows and _smirks_ just a little, and it just makes something twinge in Dorian’s gut. “Oh, fuck off!” he snarls. 

Dorian knocks the whisky back in one hit and steps off the bed and into his slippers.

“What?” Cullen half-laughs, as if he doesn’t know.

“You made a face – you. Ugh, you know what?” Dorian stomps to the door as efficiently as one can stomp in slippers. “Suck your own cock,” he says. “And this is _not_ an indication of jealousy, I’m just distinctly irritated by the implication and your manner, and _yes_ I am storming out of my own room! I’m going to my library! And when I come back, I expect you shan’t be here!”

Dorian slams the door behind him. It feels satisfying, for all of twenty seconds. 

*

Dorian spends the next few days watching Lavellan like a hawk. He toys with warning her, but ultimately decides against it – in case Cullen doesn’t do it. Dorian wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, he really does.

But no, it happens when Lavellan is taking a private moment in the garden, and Dorian is tucked into an inconspicuous corner with a book. If she notices him, she doesn’t let on. She mumbles to the plants as she preens them.

Dorian recognises the heavy fall of Cullen’s boots, and peeks around the corner. Yes, there he is, fistful of posies and pathetically hopeful expression on his face. Honestly, Dorian isn’t looking forward to this. 

Cullen speaks in a low voice, and Dorian is just a little too far away from them to hear, but he sees him offer the flowers to Lavellan. She has her back to him, but whatever face she makes has Cullen’s shy smile melt into an expression of sheer, unbridled panic. 

“What the _fuck_ is the matter with you?” she snaps. The posies lie forgotten on the ground and Dorian cringes. Maker, he’s never felt quite such a degree of second-hand embarrassment. She launches into a tirade – it’s “men” this, and “shemlen” that, effing and blinding punctuated with snorts of outrage. She finally stomps off, red in the face and Cullen even redder. 

And Cullen spots him. Of course he does, Dorian doesn’t have even a fraction of the good fortune that means he wouldn’t. Dorian tries an innocent smile, twitching his book in a way that says, _oh don’t mind me! I wasn’t listening!_ Cullen stomps off, swearing and kicking the poor posies as he makes his way to his office.

“Told you so,” mumbles Dorian. Though with no one to hear, the sentiment rings hollow.

*

They avoid each other. Or rather, Cullen actively avoids Dorian and Dorian makes it very easy for him. 

Lavellan has taken some of their number to attend to some business with Josephine in Val Royeaux, and Dorian had asked to go with her. But she’d told him no, said she wanted him digging for clues on Corypheus’ old identity. He’s busy, at least, but he’d rather be busy and out of Skyhold; he’s stewing here – stewing and a bit jumpy. 

He feels like he hasn’t left the library in days when Bull appears. 

“We’re doing a thing for Skinner’s nameday,” he says. “You coming?” 

He says it like a question, but it isn’t really a question, and Dorian finds himself being hauled out of nook, notes scattering everywhere as he’s manhandled into the tavern.

*

So maybe getting absolutely blind drunk with Bull, Sera and the Chargers was not the best idea Dorian has ever had? But you know how it gets in the tavern – everyone wants to buy drinks for _the Inner Circle_ and Dorian can’t say no to anything bad for him.

A rather blurry evening comes back into focus Maker-knows-how-many-hours after it begins, with Dorian vomiting into a plant pot, and Bull sat dutifully nearby, brandishing a Qunari sized handkerchief (Dorian vaguely recalls asking: _what the fuck is that, a fucking pillow case?_ ) and flagon of water.

“What’s your ulterior motive here, Bull?” asks Dorian, waving for the water. Bull places it in his clammy, mucky hand.

“Uh. You could barely stand when you left the tavern? I basically carried you here.” The moon is behind him, so Bull’s face is in shadow. Dorian imagines he’s frowning, though. He gulps down the water a bit too quickly, and opts to return his forehead on the lip of the plant pot.

“But _why_?” he says. He gags, to no end.

“Common decency?”

“But what’s your angle, here? You always have one, you’re never without an angle, _Mister Bull_ , and don’t think I don’t know.”

“You’re worse than Red,” Bull sighs. He rests back against the garden wall and takes the flagon back, sitting it comfortably on his thigh. 

“No one else has seen me, have they?”

“Nah. Your exit was pretty dignified, actually. Once you got out the tavern, though, you were straight into the dirt. I only noticed ‘cause I was watching for it.”

Dorian’s gotten awfully good at feigning different levels of sobriety over the years. The trick is not to pretend you’re stone cold sober, but that you’ve just decided you’re a bit too pissed and you’ve had enough – when in actual fact, you’re arse-over-tit and you don’t want to make a fool of yourself. Usually he’s fairly good at pinpointing the line between extremely drunk and black-out drunk (and that line is when he makes his excuses and goes to bed) but tonight, he’s obviously over stepped his mark and he supposes he’s lucky Bull was there. 

“So. Drinking till you throw up on the Boss’s Crystal Grace. What gives? Is it Cullen?” Bull asks. Dorian is offended – as if he needs a reason to get shit faced, he is outraged by the implication.

Then it sinks in that Bull _knows_. It doesn’t so much bother Dorian, as it bothers Dorian on Cullen’s behalf. Bull is difficult for Dorian to be around, sometimes. It’s so typically Tevinter of him to be unsettled by a Qunari, but Dorian imagines he’d be unsettled by anyone like Bull. He’s far too clever. And when all of that cleverness is channelled into working out what other people are thinking, feeling – it’s intimidating to say the least.  
Dorian is clever too, and arrogant with it, at times, but he’s nowhere near arrogant enough to underestimate someone like Bull.

To Bull, people are like puzzles, tasks to be completed. Dorian likes to at least _try_ to be a tricky one but he fears he may not have the energy to stay on guard tonight. He wants to say something witty, observant, but it comes out all brandy-garbled and not-at-all what he intended.

“Great fisting Andraste,” he mutters, “You nosey fucking shitbag.”

“I wasn’t being a nosey shitbag, I was just—”

“Depriving everyone you come within six feet of of their privacy, because you’re a nosey shitbag,” Dorian grumbles. “Tell me your theory then – you’re obviously dying to show it off.”

Bull doesn’t say anything for a moment. It’s like he’s fighting with himself – should he attempt to take some sort of moral high ground? Or just indulge himself. He must know he doesn’t have Dorian fooled by now.

Bull sighs to himself, then turns back to face Dorian. When he speaks, his tone is more enthusiastic than it should be, and Dorian would be judging, had he not just spent a good half an hour vomiting into a plant pot.

“My theory on why you’re upset? Or how I know you’re at least sleeping with Cullen.”

“Whichever one has the wildest guesswork.”

“That’ll be on why you’re upset. Figuring out that you were fucking was just… Mostly keeping an eye on Cullen – kinda dry, really,” Bull says, with a shrug. “Okay, so I figure the two of you started as a no strings thing, but you got _feelings_. Which are probably one-sided, ‘cause Cullen’s got this thing for the Boss, which I know ‘cause she was bitching about the daisy incident to me for a good hour yesterday. First I figured you’d egged him on knowing she’d lose it if he tried, and he’s pissed with you and you’re pissed with yourself – but… Then I thought about it a little more and…” Bull shakes his head. “That’s not your style, is it?

“I told him not to and he said I was being jealous, so I stormed out of _my own room_ ,” Dorian groans into the plant pot. “And then I hung around Lavellan like a bad smell in case he tried anything. I don’t even know why I just… I was sat in the garden when he tried to give Lavellan the flowers. Now he’s clearly avoiding me and… I don’t even know why it’s bothering me so much,” he sighs. “I’m such a fool.” 

“Shit, Dorian, the way you’re acting – it’s like you’re in the wrong here. He’s probably just avoiding you because he’s embarrassed.”

“I know,” Dorian snaps, weakly. 

“So it’s just… Getting to you, huh?” Bull shuffles closer, offers the water and the hankie. He’s right. Dorian nods, and takes what’s offered, rinsing his mouth and vanishing the contents of the plant pot with an easy wave of his hand. Childishly, he wishes he could magic all of his problems away too. “Poor Dorian,” says Bull.

“If you’re so clever,” Dorian begins, sounding more accusatory than he meant to. “Can you explain to me why I’m doing this to myself?”

Without missing a beat: “Short answer: he’s pretty and you’re a masochist. Long answer, mostly based on crap I’ve overheard Cole say, you’re used to shitty non-relationships with shitty men who don’t deserve you, and all of that bravado’s hiding someone who thinks he has to take what he can get. And you don’t,” Bull tells him. There’s a tenderness to his voice that sounds genuine, but likely isn’t. Dorian might offer a bitter _you’re just trying to make me feel better_ but he’s sure Bull will only argue with him. 

“And he’s pretty.”

“Obviously,” Bull chuckles. “You don’t have to be a port in a storm, that’s all I’m saying. Ditch the Commander – at least till he pulls his head out of his ass – and find a nice guy!” 

It makes sense. Everything Bull is saying makes perfect sense. Dorian doesn’t want to “ditch” Cullen but he should - for his own sake. It’ll be like pulling out a splinter – painful, but bound to get infected if left.

“Thanks, Bull,” Dorian says. Bull thumps him on the back.

“Any time.”

 

*

Dorian wakes with a steaming headache and a sense of determination. All self-pity drowned out, for the moment, by the pounding in his skull, he resounds to end things with Cullen. Today. 

He takes his breakfast in the tavern and eats everything placed in front of him, without so much as taking a breath between mouthfuls. After consuming what felt like half a loaf of bread and most of a pig, Dorian downs two tankards of water, and marches up to Cullen’s office. He gets to the stairs then feels… Rather sick, actually. Not like he’s going to vomit, but like he needs to sit down – he’s tired. 

He supposes he didn’t get much sleep last night. And even with breakfast he’s still. He’s not drunk any more, but he’s dizzy, and… He’s making excuses for himself in his internal monologue, and the stairs just seem to get higher and higher until he realises he’s not going to do this today. He just isn’t going to.

“Fuck it,” he says aloud, to himself. No one hears him. 

He goes back to bed. 


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a knock at the door which pulls Dorian from his light, unrestful slumber. It had taken him hours to drift off after abandoning his quest for the day: a combination of the headache, the residual alcohol and the daylight keeping him up, despite exhaustion. 

The daylight is dead, now, however, and Dorian has no idea what time it is. A dull, orange glow leaks from beneath his door, two shadows shuffling and breaking it. 

“Dorian? Are you awake?” It’s Cullen. 

“I am now.”

“May I come in?”

Dorian sighs heavily and sits up in his bed, fussing his hair back and his moustache into place. “The door is open.” He lights the fire with a lazy flick of his wrist, and Cullen flinches, kicking the door shut, noisily behind him. “You’re deigning to speak to me, again, then?” Dorian asks, sounding sour.

“I wanted to say sorry.”

“Good.”

Cullen frowns. “I don’t… I’ve never coped with embarrassment well. I’ve been avoiding you. Purposely. Because you… saw, and I…” he purses his lips and takes a moment. He looks terrible. Firelight is usually quite flattering but nothing can soften the hollowness to his face, the dark circles beneath his eyes. He’s more unshaven than usual, his hair is all out of place, and his eyes are shot red and sore looking. “I haven’t been well. I’m paranoid, I’m not sleeping and I’m acting like an _arse_. I’m sorry,” he says. 

Dorian had half a mind to give Cullen an earful, then he had a quarter of a mind, then… Less. Dorian has his moments, but he’s not one to kick a man while he’s down. 

“I wasn’t jealous,” he says. 

“I know.” Cullen lingers against the door, failing to make eye contact. He begins to bite his stubby fingernails, the skin around them all raw and scabby looking.

“Stop that,” Dorian says. “Come and sit down, you look like you’re about to keel over.”

They talk a little more, exchange apologies and mourn for Cullen’s now-strained relationship with Lavellan. Dorian offers to speak to her for him, and he gratefully accepts (“Anything you think will help – you obviously know her far better than I do.”), then Dorian changes the subject, tells a funny story about over-indulging in the tavern yesterday, paints a funny picture of Bull carrying him to a flowerpot because he was convinced Dorian was going to be sick. He leaves the vomit out of the story (for his ego’s sake) and groans about losing an entire day of research to a hangover. 

“You really have. It’s the middle of the night,” says Cullen. He probably hasn’t slept at all, then, beyond a nap. At least he’s not in his armour. 

“Ah. I suppose I could go to the library now - get a head start on the day,” Dorian says, stretching. He’d pull back the covers, but he hasn’t any underwear on beneath his nightshirt, and he doubts Cullen would care to get an eyeful of flaccid penis this close to dawn. 

“No,” Cullen says weakly. “I… Could I stay here, for a while? Cassandra is making me take tomorrow off but… I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep alone.”

It’s lifted right from the pages of shit book but Dorian’s chest twinges and he agrees.

He excuses himself to the washroom (feeling in need of a thorough hosing down) and returns to find Cullen tucked up in his bed, clothes neatly folded and piled up on a chair. Though if Dorian knows Cullen (and he likes to think he does) the underclothes will have been left on for reasons explicable only to Cullen. Dorian extinguishes the fire and removed the robe he took to the washroom (seeing no point in clean clothes or a fresh nightshirt) and climbs into bed behind Cullen. He pats Cullen’s hip and finds the tell-tale rub of cotton beneath his fingers. Dorian almost laughs. 

Dorian finds his lips finding their way to the back of Cullen’s neck, and Cullen melts into him, pressing them flush together. 

“Dorian?” he says. It’s like he’s going to ask a question, but he doesn’t. “Dorian.” Again, no inflection, this time. “I’m a bit tired,” he says.

“Ah, sorry.” Dorian pulls back, but Cullen wriggles to follow.

“Not _that_ tired. I only meant,” he stops. Dorian wishes he could see his face. “I’m trying to ask if… You could be the, er… On top?”

“Ride you?” Dorian slides on top of Cullen, knees either side of his hips and elbows resting on his chest.

Even in the dim light from the cracks in the window and the door, Dorian can see Cullen’s eyes darting, nervously, all over the room. “Ah… No, not exactly. If we could swap. From what we normally do?”

 _I think he’s asking you to fuck him,_ thinks Dorian. _He’s doing a shit job of it, but I think he’s asking you to fuck him. Do try to remain calm._

“Oh!” he squeaks. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Cullen mumbles. “I’ve been… Trying to see how it would feel. Copying what I’ve seen you do for me. I think I might like it, tonight.”

It is lucky for the both of them that Dorian speaks fluent Bullshit and can translate it effortlessly into plain speech. While this might be the tamest, most euphemistic dirty talk he’s ever heard, his face is hot and his cock twitches against Cullen’s stomach.

“You should turn over,” Dorian whispers. He slots a fat pillow under Cullen’s hips and, as Dorian removes some entirely unnecessary underwear, wishes he could see better.

It’s always a little awkward to do this in darkness, but Cullen would probably have kittens if he lit the room. Dorian loses the stopper for the oil when he uncorks the bottle, spills it on his sheets and almost completely misses the bedside table as he sits it down – within arm’s reach, but Maker knows if the delicate glass will survive the perilous gloom and Dorian’s clumsy, oily fingers.  
Cullen takes them without complaint, though, the fingers – he grumbles with discomfort at first, then Dorian can hear the tell-tale shake of his breath, the soft curl of his fingers in the sheets. 

Dorian belabours the preparation – sees with the free hand he drags greedily around Cullen’s body. His skin is warm, peach-fuzzy in places and almost leathery in others, lumped with scars and breaking out in gooseflesh beneath the tips of Dorian’s fingers. 

_Make him beg for it,_ says a nasty little voice. Dorian shakes his head. As amusing as that would be, begging has no place in his bed this evening – Dorian will give before he needs to be asked, as he always does when they are together. 

Three fingers, and Cullen is huffing into the skin of his arm and rocking lazily into the pillow. 

“You’re sure?” 

A soft grumble in the affirmative and Dorian is reaching for the oil again. Maker, his sheets must be a state but you can’t really have too much of it, in his opinion.

He slicks himself, brushes a little more onto Cullen (for good measure) who merely wriggles against the pillow. Cullen’s temper can be a little short, at times, but he is an expert in self-denial. Dorian has seen him go whole days without eating and longer without sleeping; he welcomes discomfort with a monastic embrace – Dorian openly begged for death, once, because the Inquisitor had him hike up a hill on an empty stomach. Dorian, in Cullen’s position, would have been demanding to have _it_ gotten on with but Cullen just waits – panting but patient.

Dorian presses a kiss to the middle of Cullen’s spine, then presses. A warning, at first, then a gentle intrusion. Cullen’s shoulders tighten and then his breathing is muffled by Dorian’s mattress or one of his pillows.

Cullen takes it so well – Dorian tells him as much, with a fervour bordering on religious. Dorian rocks ever-so-slowly and not particularly deeply. It won’t be the most passionate or pleasurable fuck he’s ever had, but it is with Cullen and that alone makes this extraordinary. Cullen must trust him a great deal and a gnawing, blooming part of Dorian hopes that means Cullen could grow to love him.

Dorian reaches around, nudges Cullen’s hips higher off the pillow and takes hold of his cock. It takes Dorian a heroic degree of concentration to keep the pace of his hips steady and mirror the rhythm with his hand but he does. Cullen begins to make _noise_ , real noise, a single, guttural groan, followed by a chant of them. He cries out the Maker’s name, then he cries out Dorian’s and spills into his hand, shuddering and shaking. Dorian stops moving, trying to memorise the feel of fluttering muscles and involuntarily rolling hips as much as he is trying to consider Cullen’s comfort. 

Once Cullen is completely limp beneath him (still whining softly into the bed) Dorian pulls out. He takes himself in hand and, with a speed that borders on pubescent, comes across what he _hopes_ is Cullen’s back, and not his sheets. 

Though he supposes, once the numb pleasure of his orgasm has faded, that it hardly matters. They’re just sheets, after all. He can burn them should the morning’s light prove them too embarrassing for the eyes of the washers.

Dorian flops down by Cullen’s side, nosing and kissing his shoulder and neck, unable to hold a satisfied hum from his throat. Cullen, barely-half awake, shuffles boneless into Dorian’s arms. 

They sleep soundly, well into the afternoon.

 

*

Dorian finds her walking the grounds. Lavellan is doing her rounds, she’s checked in on the tavern and the healers; she keeps a considered distance from the stables and Cullen’s office. Dorian feigns bumping into her on the way to the gardens, and says he’d like to speak with her privately. She seems surprised, but doesn’t question him, nodding for him to follow her up to the battlements, where they stop in one of Skyhold’s few remaining empty rooms. It’s full of debris that needs to be picked through, sorted into useful and useless, and the north facing wall is overgrown with ivy.

“What is it?” Lavellan asks. “You alright?” a touch of concern. It’s nice to have that from her. Dorian’s thought lowly of her in the past (jealousy and likely a shameful touch of racism on his part) and she’s responded to that poorly concealed disdain with nothing but kindness. The extent to which Dorian does not deserve her friendship is unmeasurable in his eyes, and now all of the unpleasant thoughts and words he’s had for her behind her back come rushing to him and make his cheeks burn.

“I er. I’m quite alright actually. How are you?” 

She smiles. “Better than I have been.”

“Good! Good, I’m glad. Though, I must confess, I haven’t dragged you away just to check up on you… I er… You know, I overheard what happened the other day – in the garden, with Cullen?”

Lavellan purses her lips and drops eye contact. She starts fiddling with her gloves. “Aye, I know. I saw you reading.”

“I was. And… you know he and I are friends, don’t you?” 

She wrinkles her nose at that, slipping from shy teenager to Inquisitor in the folding of her arms and drop of her brow. She’s still roughly about as intimidating as your average nug, but, none the less – Dorian has seen her set fire to enough people to know it’s wise to stay on her good side. 

“If this is goin’ anywhere near where it looks like it’s going, Dorian…”

“Hear me out,” he asks, and she gives and irritated sigh, but nods for him to continue. “I just… Think you might have been a little hard on him. I know things are difficult for you at the moment, and I hardly blame you for snapping but...”  
Dorian pauses to consider his wording. Maker only knows he doesn’t want her to think he’s playing matchmaker. He’s doing Cullen a favour – helping to restore a professional relationship. He’s come a long way in terms of his capacity for selflessness in the last year, but he’s not about to perform the emotional equivalent of climbing onto a pyre and setting himself alight. Even if he did, he sincerely doubts Lavellan would go near another human man with a ten foot pole, never mind a Templar and another colleague at that.  
“He’s a good man, and he has a bit of a soft spot for you. I know his timing was insensitive, and I honestly tried to talk him out of it but… daisies aren’t exactly a hanging offense, now, are they, Inquisitor?”

She snorts. “Few hours in the gibbet, maybe.” 

“Yes, probably. You were well within your rights to lose your temper with him, but I just can’t help but feel… Perhaps it’s because I’ve been serving as something of a confidant, but I really think you’ve misunderstood his intentions. He only wanted to show you he cared – romantic feelings aside, he just wanted to do something to make you feel better, and I promise he didn’t expect anything from it, really. It’s just not in his nature,” Dorian says. “I don’t think you should jump into bed with him, or anything – goodness knows I’m not telling you to _give him a chance_ , I just think it would be such a shame to throw away your good working relationship with him over a silly mistake.”

Lavellan’s scrunched up lips wiggle thoughtfully beneath her nose. Her brow is furrowed but no longer frowning. “Yeah I s’pose you’re right… I’ve been meaning to speak to him for a while, y’know? Realised I’d gone a bit overboard when I calmed down I… Just had stuff to do and then,” she sags, shoving her hands into her pockets and hunching her little shoulders. “I’ll talk to him later, yeah?”

“They’ll write ballads about your mercy, my Lady.”

She grins. “Don’t overdo it.”

 

*

_It’s been a while since we had a game? Chess after dinner?_

Dorian thanks Cullen’s messenger (a nervous blonde woman, who Dorian knows by sight and never meets his eye) and sends her on her way, returning to tidying his books and his notes away. Corypheus had his name now, and Dorian found great satisfaction in reducing the great Darkspawn Conductor to Sethius Amladaris. It makes him a great deal less frightening, in Dorian’s opinion. 

There are forty three books currently piled up in his nook, and he’ll have to completely reorganise the library’s history section to accommodate and re-accommodate them. He has his sources written up, his are notes half organised and he has more than enough to write a brief paper surmising his findings on Corypheus – if he gets it published, it ought to ruffle more than a few feathers. 

He’s spent so much of the last year fighting and camping and generally _running around_ that the mere prospect of gutting a section of the library _and_ writing a paper fills him with a sort of boyish glee he hasn’t felt in months. This is, of course, provided he survives their next encounter with the Darkspawn Formally Known as Amladaris – but Dorian would rather think about his paper than his possible imminent doom.

As he begins to stack his books alphabetically by author, he spots a man lingering on the stairs. The man walks up the stairs, speaks briefly with the Grand Enchanter, then takes a moment to stare blankly at the library’s popular Fiction section. He shuffles his weight from foot to foot, takes a deep breath, then makes his way uncertainly toward Dorian. 

Dorian is currently knelt on the floor, so the man bends awkwardly to speak.

“Hullo,” he says, voice cracking. “It’s Dorian, isn’t it?” 

Perhaps _boy_ would be a more appropriate descriptor than man. He’s younger than Dorian (no older than twenty one), and taller, with thick dark hair and a broad, handsome face. He has a staff strapped to his back and a short-sword at his hip, and he wears the uniform of Cullen’s ‘mixed’ military unit. Cullen seems to think the idea is rather revolutionary – Dorian hasn’t the heart to tell him mages and the mundane have been fighting side by side in Tevinter for millennia.

“Mmhmm?”

“I’m Ted,” says the boy. Dorian takes him for a spellsword from the outfit, and a Marcher from the accent.

“And I suppose you’re here to gawk at the _magister_?” he asks. His novelty has mostly worn off now, but he still catches people staring and whispering.

“No!” Ted replies, defensive. “Just… Erm, the books. Are you done with them?”

Dorian gestures to the forty odd books around his knees. “Can you be a shade more specific?”

Ted’s mouth hangs open, like a fish’s. “Er… The… Tevinter ones? They were banned in my circle, I just wanted to have a bit of a pick through,” he says, through a handful of swallows and pauses. Dorian relaxes, uncurling his lip to a polite smile. The way the southern circles withheld information from their charges is frankly despicable, and Dorian is always happy to help a fellow mage in the pursuit of knowledge.

“They’re not grimoires or anything, you know, but I’m planning on ordering some. These are all history books, not even interesting ones, they’re in the old tongue and about the lineages of noble houses. There are one or two about the dragon gods and the Imperial Chantry in common, if you’d like those, though I’d advise you take them with a pinch of salt. And you must promise not eat or drink anywhere near them.” Dorian locates _Old Gods: A History of Imperial Dragon Worship_ and _An Impartial Analysis of the Formation of the Imperial Chantry_ both thick, expensive leather-bound tomes that weigh half a ton. Dorian offers them to Ted, who takes them easily. 

“Yeah, okay! Thanks!” he says. “And er, let me know when those grimoires are in?”

“I shall!” Dorian says. He goes back to fixing his books, when he notices Ted is… Still standing there. “Is there something else I can help you with?”

“Er… Maybe? I’m just looking for stuff to read. ‘Cause okay, I’m actually a er… Arcane warrior, primarily but… I could be interested in books? That’s feasible, just because I’ve got a bit of combat training doesn’t mean I don’t read, you know? It’s an awful stereotype. Maybe you could recommend some things?”

“You’re sweating,” says Dorian, with a raised eyebrow. Ted fumbles with the books in his thick palms, wiping his slick forehead on the back of his hand.

“Am I?” he squeaks. Dorian narrows his eyes and snatches the precious, expensive books from Ted’s awkward, unworthy hands.

“If you’re going to drop them and sweat all over the leather, you can’t have them,” he says, feeling a shade petulant. They really are very expensive books. Ted looks panicked. 

“I have gloves on me? I could – hang on,” he shoves his hands in his pockets, then stiffens, removing his hands to bury his face in them. “Look, no this is stupid, I’m not here about books.”

“ _Never_.”

“I’m going to be honest here – I was… You know the Iron Bull, don’t you?” Ted begins, sheepishly peeking out from between his fingers.

“Unfortunately.”

“So… Okay I spend a lot of time in the tavern, and I’ve gotten to talking to him a few times and you came up, and I said, I said, erm.” A deep breath. “That I’d like to get to know you better? And He said I should get you drink and I’ve been building up to it all day, and I’m not saying Bull put me up to it or anything, just that he said you wouldn’t say no, probably… Which! Is not some sort of suggestion you drink a lot or that you’re easy or anything just that…” Ted looks horrified, and hides in his hands again. “Maker help me. Is this doing anything for you? Is the sweaty bumbling doing anything for you? Is this at all charming because I can just _fuck off_ if this is as awful as I think it is.”

Dorian swallows a chuckle. He’s flattered – Ted seems like a nice person, if a tad _sweaty_ , and he’d probably go for it were it not for the obvious.

“It’s… A little charming, admittedly, but I’m afraid I’m frightfully busy ‘til we set off. Appointments and tactical discussions with the _Inner Circle_ and such,” Dorian says, with disappointment that is only half feigned.

“Oh! Right, okay. Maker, I thought you’d all be wanting to relax before we set off for the Temple thingy.”

“No rest for the wicked, I’m afraid,” Dorian says, with his most charming smile. “Why don’t you buy that drink for Bull instead? Better yet, tell him I told you to tell him to buy one for you – by way of an apology from me.”

“Yeah. ‘Kay, I’ll do that,” Ted smiles, less nervous but clearly embarrassed. “Another day though?”

“Of course!”

And Ted leaves the library, a little forlorn, but not visibly humiliated.

Dorian, while going about his business, feels a little pang of regret. He isn’t _with_ Cullen, he is free to see other people. Still – something about it wouldn’t have sat quite right. Dorian convinces himself he refused because it wouldn’t have been fair to Ted – not because he’s worried it could possibly upset Cullen.

Still, it nags at him. It nags at him all afternoon, and nags at him through dinner and the walk up to Cullen’s office for the chess game.

Dorian finds Cullen setting up the board on his desk, and picking at the dregs of a bowl of soup. He has a dreamy little smile on his face, which is odd, considering he’s spent the last few weeks planning a siege.

His every movement has an air of placidity, and his little smile doesn’t drop even when Dorian takes his rook about two minutes into the game – a loss which normally would have had Cullen on the verge of snapping something,

Dorian rolls his eyes. “What are you looking so very smug about, then?”

“The Inquisitor,” Cullen says, “Not only is she speaking to me again but… Well…” Cullen’s grin says everything.

Dorian’s insides lurch; from the bottom of his belly to the centre of his throat he _churns_. He recalls receiving a wound out in the field (his first and only bad one), watching his own blood spatter from his thigh, the way it had reddened his trousers and his adversary’s sword - the utter shock of it was the same. 

Cullen gnaws his lip, smile unable to keep itself contained, his cheeks as pink as summer apples. Dorian decides this is going to be the death of him.  
His heart squeezes a last miserable, uncomfortable, thud before it explodes in his rib cage and tears open his chest, leaving Dorian bare and in a thousand pieces, chunks of him slopped upon the chess board and smeared across the walls. 

“Ha! You sly dog,” he says, brightly.

“I was… I was on the verge of leaving, actually. A bad week with recovery but… She talked me down and then a few days later she came to check on me and… One thing lead to another.” Cullen looks so young; happy and well rested. There’s a solitary dimple digging his left cheek that Dorian has never seen before - had he always been so dour when they were together?. “I know you asked her to forgive me and – thank you so much. I… I know it’s early days, but… I’m not sure I’ve ever been happier.”

Pragmatically, Dorian knows he’ll get over this, eventually. Though it feels as if he’s in one thousand pieces right now, he’s been in one thousand pieces before and put himself back together again. Dorian wonders how many times he’ll have to do it, though, break and reform. If one day, he’ll go to pick himself up and only find nine hundred and ninety eight pieces or seven hundred and four or sixty three. He may lose so many pieces in the destroy-fix process, there’ll hardly be enough bits of Dorian left to remake himself into something recognisable.

“You’re welcome! You deserve some happiness, I think.”

“Obviously this means… There’s no need for you and I to continue our ah… Physical…”

“Don’t pull a muscle, Cullen, I presumed this would stop at some point.” Dorian clears his throat, and gives an irritated sigh. It’s the performance of a lifetime. “I shan’t pretend I’m not a bit disappointed but… It was fun while it lasted, I suppose – and I’m glad you and Lavellan are having a good time.”

Dorian hates how much this hurts. He hates this softness inside of him. He hates that he never steels himself for the hurt; that he keeps stuffing his over-ripened-peach for a heart into the clumsy fists of foolish men with too-tight grips and no account for their own strength. He is overcome with a strange urge to just jam a chess piece into his mouth and swallow in the hope he’d choke on it

“It’s more than a good time, Dorian,” says Cullen, suddenly stern and serious. “She and I… I really think something _wonderful_ could come of this. Something… Permanent, perhaps.”

“Hm!” Dorian purses his lips, and stares down at the chessboard. The rook’s the thickest piece, but the chanter’s got that pointy bit on it that’d really stick in your throat. “Well!”

Cullen laughs. “Well indeed.” 

Dorian finishes the game without fuss (he wins because Cullen isn’t paying attention), then leaves a happy Cullen to his happy thoughts and happy paperwork. 

His feet feel as if they’re made of lead and oh! Surprise, surprise, they’ve brought him to the tavern. It’s not particularly busy, but Dorian doesn’t look to see who is or isn’t there - he sits at the bar, orders an ale and thuds his head down on the counter. He’s far too old for tears, so he wallows in a dry, silent despair, wondering how he could possibly have allowed this to happen. 

He thinks to himself: _I must talk to someone about this_ then realises he hasn’t a soul to talk to. Of course, he has scores of casual acquaintances across Skyhold now – people to whom he performs his anecdotes in the tavern, the mages who’ll giggle along with him as he narrates his distaste for the bias Skyhold archives, the rest of the inner circle.

Cullen is a friend, but he’s never been a confidant – the Inquisitor might have been, but now she’s right at the centre of the problem. There’s Bull, but… Bull doesn’t so much listen to people as he does gather information, sponging bits of people up so he can wring them out if need be. 

There isn’t even any one back home. His scant few close friends have turned Venatori (or are, in some cases, dead) and likely wouldn’t appreciate a letter about his romantic woes – the idea makes him laugh, softly into his flagon. 

Then, like a fly to shit, Cole is upon him.

“Go away,” says Dorian. “I’m not in the mood to have anyone digging through my head.” He doesn’t look up, he doesn’t want to see those, sad, watery gazing through him.

“I don’t do that anymore,” says Cole. “Not to my friends. Varric says it’s impolite to do it on purpose. You still felt sad, though, sadder than usual. It wants to come out but you’re not letting it – but it leaks any way, weeping like a wound. I wanted to help.”

“You can’t.”

“Not fix it, just help,” says Cole. He pats Dorian’s shoulder. “There, there,” he says. 

 

*

 

_~~Dear~~ Father,_

_Tomorrow, we move to the Arbour Wilds to strike Corypheus, and hopefully put an end this madness._

_~~I want you to know~~ I’d like you to know that I intend to come home once this is done. ~~And~~ Because something has to be done. You thought the same, once, now I can not imagine what you must be thinking. ~~I suggest you name a new heir, if you haven’t already, and~~_

_~~If you~~ I pray you haven’t gotten yourself mixed up in this, like Alexius, who they executed, by the way. ~~I wouldn’t want~~_

_fucking pissing arse arse arse never mind_

*

Fires crackle all over the camp – there’s fifty of them, the largest force Dorian has travelled with since Halamshiral. They’re a day’s walk from the Wilds. Leliana’s birds tell them she and Cullen and their collective forces have already arrived. They’ve bedded down with no issues – though a scout was found with his throat neatly cut in the forest, and it is suspected to be the work of an old elven trap.

The entire Inner Circle (barring Josephine) has made the journey, including the witch, Morrigan. 

Dorian knows he’s hardly in a position to fling words like ‘Witch’ around, but there is the school of necromancy – well studied, stable and safe – and then there is what Morrigan does. Her magic festers in the air with the same quality as the dust in ancient tombs; too old, and too intangible to be wielded by someone who is so young and so real. It reminds Dorian of how Solas’ casting feels, but it’s _dirtier_. So Dorian asks him, as they pick at stew drawn from a huge, communal pot, whether he’s noticed any similarity.

Solas frowns for a moment, into his bowl. The fire light glints in the sweat at his brow, as he contemplates his answer.

“I suppose,” he says, finally. “Both of us have studied the magics of Arlathan.” 

Dorian waits for a monologue that doesn’t come.

“And that’s it? That’s… all you have to say?”

Solas relaxes his frown and stirs his stew, his lips tight and thin. “I’m afraid so. I haven’t special insight on every little sneeze and hiccough just because a mage performs them.”

“I’d hardly call turning into a giant fucking spider at whim a _sneeze_ ,” Dorian says, snapping a little. “And normally, it’d take a dragon attack to stop you from volunteering your _special insight_.”

Solas turns to him where they sit, and absently runs his fingers through the fox pelt draped across his shoulder. Dorian expects a tongue lashing, but only receives a sigh.

“There is something very familiar about her, though I don’t quite know what it is,” he says. “Are you satisfied? Because if I don’t know, _I don’t know_ , and no amount of snipping will change that. Perhaps you should ask Morrigan for her opinion on the matter?”

Dorian scrutinises his stew. Perhaps Solas really doesn’t know, and this conversation is wounding his pride – he has no reason to withhold information on purpose, does he?

“I could ask her, but I’m not bloody going to.”

Solas snorts. “Frightened of the swamp witch, Dorian?” 

Before Dorian can answer, with certainty, in the affirmative, the Inquisitor wanders over. She has no bowl with her, and no apparent intention to eat, looking paler than usual. She sits between Dorian and Solas, chatting to them both as they finish their stew, refusing to take any food they offer to her.

“I know I’ve gotta eat,” she says, “Just… Might go for a walk first, or something, get myself an appetite,” as if they haven’t been walking all day.

“I’ll go with you,” says Dorian, as if he hasn’t been walking all day. “The fire’s starting to make my eyes water.”

“I’d be glad for the company,” says Lavellan. So they set off, just out of shot of camp, following a worn little pathway and deciding to collect elfroot as they walk – you can never have too much elfroot, after all.

Dorian, to his credit, does not immediately begin needling for information about Cullen. They talk about Lavellan’s missives from Briala, first, then Leliana’s candidacy for Divine, then Blackwall. She brings him up – Dorian wouldn’t dare.

“Just I… Spoke to him ‘n’… I dunno, we just talked. It was nice. I wouldn’t go with him again, but it’d be nice to just… Be his friend or something, I dunno. I don’t like being so angry all the time,” she says, almost whispering. They’ve collected quite the share of elfroot by now – Dorian has made a little sling for it with his cloak, while Lavellen crouches by his feet, delicately cutting the plants and handing them to him. 

“Well,” Dorian says, trying to sound casual. “You have Cullen now, don’t you?” 

She stiffens. “Who says anything about Cullen?”

“He did, for one.”

She slots her dagger back into her boot, and stands. Even in the dim light, Dorian can see her glaring. “And what did he say?”

_Don’t immolate the messenger?_

“That you helped him when he was having a particularly bad day with his withdrawal and one thing lead to another,” Dorian shrugs, smiles, tries to keep it light. He half regrets bringing it up, really, but Lavellan’s reaction sets a petty hope kindling in his chest. It’s not the shy smile he expected, the girlish pinkening of cheeks, and twiddling of hair – her entire mood has clouded, her shoulders seized like an angry cat’s and her glare unyielding.

“Fucking hell. I told him not to go spreading it around! How’d it even come up? He’s not… Bragging, or nothing, is he?” 

“No! I just asked why he looked… So happy? It was just a few days before we left, he’d been awfully stressed and then he told me about it.” 

“That sounds like bragging.”

“It wasn’t.” It was a _little_ , come to think of it. “I needled it out of him, really. Between you and me, he did seem to want to tell someone. He’s really quite smitten with you!” Dorian grins, and Lavellan makes a face like she’s only just realised she stood in horse shit.

“You’re winding me up, are you? ‘Cause I actually said to him, like I-I mean, I thought I made it pretty clear I didn’t have no room for _smittens_ and daisies.” She looks less angry, more agitated; upset, fidgeting, fiddling with the hem of her cloak while Dorian is left cradling the elfroot. It’s an awful conversation to have, and Dorian tries to stamp down any _pleased_ feelings. Cullen is not going to fall into his arms just because Lavellan has broken his heart – there is no upside to this, not even for Dorian. If Cullen returns to his bed, he’ll only be more miserable, more distant. It’s not even a hollow victory; it’s a return to stalemate.

“I’m not winding you up, I… You must understand I’m not in the habit of breaking his confidence, but he seems to think you’ll have a future together. I only brought it up because I assumed you felt the same way,” Dorian says. Yes, any slight giddiness he may have had is quashed by panicked tears welling in Lavellen’s eyes.

“No! No I don’t an’…” she begins shakily. She presses the heel of her palm into her eye and sucks a great breath through her nose. “Shit! Shit, Dorian, I swear, I fuckin’… well I thought I was pretty clear, I mean… I said we need to talk after we sort out the arbour wilds, an’ I mean everyone knows what _we need to talk_ means, don’t they? He was like, can I see you again, an’ I was like, _hmm, that’s probably not a good idea_ and then _we need to talk after_ like, that’s obvious isn’t it?”

“I fear you underestimate Cullen’s capacity for density.”

Her voice has gradually risen in pitch, she shakes slightly. “He kissed _me_ , you know! I never started it, I just… I felt so fucking sorry for him, he was a mess! He was threatening to leave and I just couldn’t bring myself to push him away!” Dorian wants to stop her. Wants to tell her he isn’t _judging_ her, that she must not feel the need to justify herself to Dorian Pavus, of all people. “I mean, I’ve been lonely myself and he’s nice enough to look at, isn’t he? And… fuck’s sake, you must think I’m a right fuckin’ _bitch_.”

“I don’t think you’re a bitch.” Dorian trips on the B and wrinkles his nose at the rest of it. He hears the echoes of it in his mind’s hallway; in his father’s voice, punctuated by mother’s infuriated screams. “Don’t say that.”

“Oh no, I am! I am, I am, I am! I should have pushed him off me! Ugh, this is what I fuckin’ get for thinkin’ I could do _something_ without it coming back to bite me in the arse.” She digs her hands into her eyes again, and takes a long, thick breath. Dorian doesn’t know what to do, or what to say. His cloak is still full of elfroot. Lavellan snaps her arms by her side; her eyes are red but her back in straight. “You know what? I’m just gunna pretend we never had this fuckin’ conversation, an’ I’m gunna say to him exactly what I was plannin’ to say. He’s not gunna know I know, and everything can just go back to normal.”

“I… Think that might be for the best, actually.” Dorian sighs, heavily. The strong smell of the fresh cut elfroot drifts into his nostrils – his sinuses feel almost uncomfortably clear for it, and the slight rattle he’s felt in his chest for the last couple of days has dissipated. “Could you take some of this off me? My eyes are starting to stream and I’ll end up high as a kite.”

“Oh yeah, oops. This stuff’s really strong, isn’t it?” she sniffs delicately, then shovels half of it into her own cloak. “Healer’s’ll be happy though. Good solid night of work, we’ll have enough draughts and poultices to go round.” She smiles to herself and nods back in the direction of the camp, humming under her breath.  
“Hey, Dorian,” she says.

“Inquisitor?”

“If Cullen ever tells you anything about me ever again: just… don’t tell me, okay?”

“Alright.” 

“I get you’re his friend and everything, but stay out of it next time,” she says. Dorian has the distinct feeling he’s being told off. 

There’s an _excuse me?_ bubbling on his tongue, but it doesn’t come out. He hasn’t been meddling, not deliberately, but he can certainly see how it might seem that way. 

“I didn’t do this on purpose,” he says.

“Yeah, I know. Just saying. If you ever felt the need to not do something on purpose on Cullen’s behalf again…” She shrugs. “Let’s not argue. C’mon.” 

Dorian follows her back to camp, in a state of indignant silence. 

 

*

Two nights since the battle ended, and Lavellan, Morrigan, Solas, Cassandra and Varric fail to reappear from the mouth of the elven temple. 

Cullen paces. Leliana sends three scouts, all of whom fail to return as well. They fared well in the battle, and most of the bodies the soldier set about cremating are those of fallen Wardens and Red Templars rather than their own.

For being so far south on the map, the Arbour Wilds are unnaturally humid, and even Dorian finds himself sweating, slightly. The closeness of the air and the strange heat makes the waiting unbearable. Dorian helps the healers where he can, he eats, he washes, he sleeps; he feels as though he’s done nothing but stare at the temple.

As the third night begins to draw in, Cullen threatens to go in looking himself. He demands Dorian’s presence, two of Leliana’s scouts, and any Soldier of his who’ll volunteer (and almost all of them within earshot do). 

Dorian is trying to decide whether he wants to talk Cullen out of this or not, when the raven arrives, bearing a note in Lavellan’s hand. It flies to Leliana, and she takes its burden with such force, the bird frightens, and flaps up into a nearby tree. 

A moment of silent reading, Dorian’s stomach churning and Cullen tense at his side, and then Leliana groans, as if she’s just stood in something unpleasant. 

“They’re back in Skyhold,” she says.

“What?” snaps Cullen. “When? How? They left without us?”

“ _Escaped temple via disused Eluvian, arrived through one we have in Skyhold, will explain in more detail when you get back, sent bird immediately, sorry for any inconvenience. Corypheus LOST! Leliana come home, bring everyone, Cullen - retrieve Samson from temple, DO NOT ENGAGE ELVES IN COMBAT – THEY ARE NO LONGER HOSTILE._ ”

Dorian laughs. Then Leliana laughs and signals her scouts to start packing up the camp. Cullen remains grave, gathering a group of soldiers for the task that lies ahead for him. 

“Do you want me to come as well?” asks Dorian, before leaving to deliver the good news to the rest of the Inner Circle. 

“No. No, you get yourself back to Skyhold,” Cullen says. “Tell her I missed her, and I’m glad she’s safe.”

Dorian nods. He wouldn’t tell her that if Cullen paid him.

 

*

 

With a clap of red and a surge of magic that makes Dorian’s teeth ring, the ground cracks. It cracks and dislodges itself from the earth, rising with a speed that makes Dorian lose his footing, fall, and drop off the edge, rolling unceremoniously into the ditch it has left behind. Varric tumbles down in much the same manner, and both of them clamour awkwardly to avoid Vivienne as she drops from the sky. She throws a huge arcane shield before she lands, steadying herself against the force of it. With a dancerly straightening of her legs, she lands on her feet, without so much as a scuff on her. 

“Clear the area!” she calls. She throws her shield above their heads, cocooning them in magic while pieces of rubble and rock shatter against it. They scramble up the side of the ditch, and find Cole, unconscious and on his front, face in the dirt. Dorian, with immense effort, hauls him up from the ground and over his shoulder – which twists in a strange, painful position, makes an awkward popping sound, hurts terribly, then becomes promptly immobile ( _oh brilliant, just fantastic_ , he thinks). He is immensely grateful that the Iron Bull drops out of the sky next, bouncing off Vivienne’s shield like a hailstone on a parasol. He seems no worse for wear, however, skidding into their range as Vivienne drops the shield to allow for him. Bull extracts Cole from Dorian’s arms as if he weighs nothing. 

It’s a small miracle that Dorian spots Sera toppling to the ground among the rubble. He catches her before impact with a panicked modification of a barrier spell, which he is rather impressed with, but has her screeching louder than the fall had. 

“Where are the others?” Bull asks. It’s strangely silent inside the shield. Streaks of light and fire rocket from the fresh hole in the sky, stone rains down like ill weather, but all there is to be heard is panting.

“With Lavellan,” Sera says. “They look steady, fighting Coryphyfish and that. Wanted to help, but…” she scrubs her hair with her fists and growls. “Back flipped off the fucking rock, alright?”

“I’m sure we’ll all laugh about that later,” Vivienne says, uncorking a vial of lyrium with her teeth, and spitting it upon the ground. “For now, I suggest _we run_ , before this shield drops and we’re all crushed!” she knocks back the lyrium with an uncharacteristic urgency, then launches herself forward, running at a pace Dorian can barely keep up with. They run for almost a mile without stopping, shield unwavering. 

She drops the shield at the snowy lip of the forest and elegantly collapses, as if there should be a fainting couch beneath her rather than cold snow and rocky ground. She’s over-extended herself, and the Lyrium won’t have helped. Dorian doubts southerners have it drilled into them how fragile an over-extended mage is, and commands everyone wearing a cloak to remove it and give it to Vivienne.

“We need to keep her warm,” Dorian says, by way of explanation. No one seems to question him, and Vivienne is propped against a tree, on dry, snowless ground, swaddled in three cloaks and Varric’s duster.

They tend to their wounds and their wounded as best they can with the scant potions and poultices snatched up before they set off, then they simply watch and wait, close to silence. Varric eyes Dorian’s limp arm with a grimace, and Dorian refuses to let any one touch it.

Dorian does not pray (as Sera does, under her breath; as Varric does, his fist clenched upon his lips but the sounds still escaping) but he wishes, and hopes. There are six or seven islands of rock above their heads, and Sera points to the largest one, huge, tiered and apparently carrying most of what is left of the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

“That’s the one they’re on,” she says. “Can you see?”

He can’t, beyond the vague shapes of two dragons, and the occasional burst of magical light.

An hour or so after it begins: it ends. Just like that, the Breach stitches itself back together, and with a distant shattering sound and a flash so unnaturally bright Dorian has to shield his eyes, the islands of rock come crashing back to the earth, hitting with such a force that the ground rumbles beneath their feet. 

Then they’re running again, barely conscious Vivienne and Cole, lagging groggily behind them. Vivienne cannot give them a shield (she tries any way, though no one had asked her) so they must rely on Dorian’s shaky barriers and his particularly draining _haste_ spell, which has the chunks of falling rock above them slowing dramatically, dropping like treacle from a spoon and rendered harmless.

The spell lasts as long as needs to. Cassandra finds them first, limping, eyes wet with relief and a strange grin upon her face.

“She did it,” she says. 

 

*

Solas slips away before the Inquisitor is even out of her sick bed. They’re all confined to a makeshift hospital as soon as they return, partaking in an extremely brief celebration in the courtyard, before Dagna and a squad of healers drag them into quarantine and put them to bed. 

His shoulder is dislocated, for which Cole repeatedly and profusely apologises. Dorian seems to have come out of this about as well as everyone else, at any rate.  
Bull, after insisting for a full two days he is _fine_ , finally admits that he may have “Re-fucked” his bad ankle, and is confined to a bed while a healer prods at him, and Dagna begins to gleeful draw up designs for a new brace. Cassandra has cracked her ribs, Blackwall fractured several awkward little bones in his shield hand ( _Good,_ Dorian thinks to himself) and Sera has certainly done _something_ to her foot which prevents her putting weight on it but refuses to let the healers come near her. Vivienne is told she over extended her magic, and sent her body into shock with cold and lyrium, and might have died were it not for them getting her wrapped up so quickly. She is told she needs to rest for a week, an idea which she cackles at, but doesn’t seem to question. She sleeps without stirring, only waking to eat and bathe. 

Varric is unharmed, but devastated by a scratch on Bianca, and Cole seems to be no worse for wear, but Dagna fabricates excuses to keep him under watch any way, eying him like an alchemist with a lump of lead. 

The Inquisitor herself is taken to rest and be treated in her private quarters. They are assured she is fine, but she is accepting few guests. 

Dorian is released the earliest of his injured friends, and after being thoroughly tested for: taint, possession, an ancient plague, lyrium poisoning and a rare disease commonly found in nugs in the Hinterlands – he is fitted with a sling and allowed to leave.

Almost immediately he bumps into a frantic Josephine who explains that she has begun to organise a grand party to celebrate their win. Barely a week of peace in the wake of victory – Josephine drags Dorian to the throne room, and they find it hopelessly crammed with decorators, cooks, tailors, dignitaries and minstrels. 

She grins like a jackal. “Isn’t it wonderful!”

“Why… Why would you do this?” he asks. She launches into a long explanation about relief and celebration and establishing the Inquisition as a long term power, but Dorian suspects she may simply have been _bored_. 

He attempts to visit the Inquisitor, but is turned away by the guard at her door.

“Is that a joke?” he asks. “Do you know who I am?”

“Err,” the guard is young and doesn’t meet Dorian’s eye. “Commander Cullen says not to let anyone in but him, Lady Montilyet and Sister Leliana, ser, sorry, ser. Even if he wouldn’t mind you going in, ser, I’d get told off for ignoring him.”

Dorian decided not to press the issue with the guard, merely rolling his eyes. “And where is your illustrious Commander? So that I might have permission to visit my friend?”

“In seclusion. Says no one’s to disturb him. Came down here in a foul mood yesterday, so I think the Inquisitor’s given him some big job to do or something? I heard shouting, any way,” says the soldier, squinting thoughtfully. “But, er. Not that I’m one to speculate or gossip. Best to wait till he’s free and ask yourself.”

Dorian clicks his tongue, and marches to the rotunda snapping a rather adolescent _whatever_ at the soldier. Dorian needn’t speculate too wildly on the nature of a conversation Lavellan would have with Cullen that would leave him so ill tempered, and prompt him hiding in his office.

There’d have been a time when Dorian would immediately scamper to Cullen’s door, knock and plead till he was let in – but the idea just leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He’ll see Cullen when he sees him, no more special efforts. Of course, Dorian had hoped to preserve their friendship, and it is, perhaps, unfair of him to feel quite so wrung out when _he_ instigated this and instigated it under false terms, but… He needs time to heal. And sometimes, a little bitterness can go a long way. 

Lavellan will have told him how she feels by now, and Cullen, likely will be devastated. And if Cullen comes to Dorian, for once, Dorian will not give in to something he knows is bad for him. On the walk back to his quarters, he entertains the idea of giving up drinking too – then he laughs, loudly, to himself. 

He considers going to his chair in the library, but decides, instead to head for his quarters. He might read, he might write a letter home (a real one, this time) thankful that his left arm is in the sling, not his right. 

His quarters are a little messier than he left them – servants having been sent to fetch fresh clothes for him in quarantine – but they’re largely undisturbed. He finds a favourite book (a rare entry of fiction in his personal library) and picks it up where he left it just a few weeks previous. 

It’s a melodrama set in the seedy back streets of Minrathous, about a soporati dancer who loses a foot and is sold into slavery by her mother. She’s bought by the owner of a brothel, and falls in love with a magister’s daughter, who frequents the establishment to provide healing to the workers there. They’re found out – the dancer is sold to labour camp, and the magister’s daughter is made tranquil for a crime she did not commit, and that’s how the story ends. The book came out when Dorian was twelve, the year he was sent to a boarding school, and was just about the most illicit thing any of the students had access to.  
Most read it for the steamy bits – the countless sex scenes, the lurid descriptions of brothels and poverty that seemed so foreign and grubby-glamorous to the wealthy children of nobility. Dorian still had himself convinced he was _normal_ and insisted he read it exclusively for the bits where girls kissed each other. A friend had privately admitted to him that he really liked the story, and he sympathised with the Magister’s daughter, and Dorian had laughed in his face.

(“Wanting something you can’t have,” says Virgil, with a heavy sigh. “Isn’t that… Don’t you understand that?” Virgil places a small, shaking hand on the back of Dorian’s, a hopeful smile tugging his lips. Dorian snatches his hand away, sniggers and sneers.

“Why do you have to make everything so _weird?_ ” Dorian asks. He doesn’t wait for the answer, just runs out of the dormitory, dog-eared book left abandoned on Virgil’s bed.)

It was banned by the first enchanter, of course, but Dorian had purchased his own copy by then, and charged a few silvers to let people borrow it. He was sat on a small fortune by the time he got caught; if Dorian remembers correctly, that was the second of three strikes that lead to his expulsion. 

It dawns on him he should start making arrangements for passage back to Tevinter soon. Before he allows himself to get complacent. He’ll talk Lavellan first, of course, he’ll likely need her help to secure himself some form of diplomatic immunity – perhaps he can ask to return as an agent of the Inquisition rather than just a lone radical. Lone radicals don’t tend to last long in politics, after all. For now, however, he can give himself time to rest. He won’t be getting far with his arm in a sling, after all, and he _does_ have a party to attend. 

Dorian is just getting to the bit where the Dancer and the Magister’s Daughter finally resolve their slow burning sexual tension when there is a knock at the door. Dorian calls for them to enter, and Cullen (surprise, surprise) stumbles through his door, drunk as a lord and looking profoundly _lost_.

“I heard you weren’t to be disturbed,” says Dorian. Cullen blinks at him.

“I heard you were out of quarantine,” he replies. “Are you alright? Your arm?”

“It’s dislocated. Well, it was, the healers popped it back in. I have to rest it for a few weeks, anyway, so I’m sling bound and not to leave Skyhold,” he sighs. “How are you? You look dreadful. And _drunk_.”

“Yes, well. I’ve been drinking.” He buries his face in his hands and kicks the door shut behind him, collapsing against it and groaning quietly. “You’re not one to talk.”

“I know I’m not,” he says. “What’s the matter then? Were you secretly on Corypheus’ side all along? Has the world not-ending been a real blow for you?”

“She threw me a pity fuck,” says Cullen. “Her words. She never wanted me. She tried to let me down gently, but I kept pressing, and asking, and snapping until _she_ snapped and…” he sags against the door, then slides to the floor, legs kicked out sloppily and casual clothes half untied and unbuttoned in different places. “She never wanted me. Nobody ever wants me. And that she could want me… That was… I just made that up. I imagined it – in my head we were half way to the bloody wedding.” Bloody and Wedding are punctuated by Cullen thunking his head back on the door.

“Oh dear,” Dorian says, he tries to make it sound like he didn’t know this was coming; luckily, Cullen seems too wrapped up in self-pity to notice anything amiss with Dorian. He remains perched on his bed, frozen. There’s instinct to go to Cullen, to comfort him – but there’s part of Dorian that just wants to run, to run very far, and very fast and not have to deal with his own feelings, never mind Cullen’s. He stays in his spot, sat on his good hand. 

“I slunk off to my office like a coward, spent the night and this morning working my way through a bottle of sodding _celebratory whisky_ that Josephine brought me…” Cullen snorts. His eyes are wet, all of a sudden. “And _here I am_ , because I got to thinking, and now I have to _ask_ , because I want to know even if I mightn’t like the answer.” He takes a deep breath, lips pursing and chin wobbling ever so slightly. Dorian tries to find a flowery turn of phrase in his mind to describe it, a big word, a pretty word – but all he finds is _sad_. Cullen looks so _sad_ it’s making Dorian sad just to look at him. “When we sleep together, Dorian, it’s not because you feel sorry for me, is it?”

“No. No of course not,” he blurts. He’s too taken aback (too afraid) to elaborate, and when Cullen looks at him expectantly, he snaps. “Is that enough? Or do you want me to embarrass myself soothing your ego?”

Cullen shakes his head. “Would it be so terrible to want a little soothing after what’s happened?”

“No,” Dorian says. But he won’t be the one to give it. “You must understand… You’re not the only one whose pride has taken a hit in this little situation… Forgive me if I’m disinclined to sit here and fawn over you after just… Dropped me like a bag of hot vomit.”

Cullen frowns, ears reddening. “Given the nature of our arrangement, I… I don’t think that’s very fair.”

Something snaps, then. Empathy vanishes in a wash of fury, a sudden tide of outrage that sweeps Dorian along like a ragdoll.

“Oh I’m not being fair, am I? For a _year_ I shared your bed, and served as your confidant, and kept you company when you were at your worst, and… You just ended it. With no regard for how I might feel, or for what had transpired between us, you just ended it, like it meant _nothing_ to you.” 

The outburst surprises Dorian as much as it seems to surprise Cullen. But he’s angry now, furious, he can feel it in the tight rise of his chest and the heat of his face. He’s so furious, he almost feels a bit sick with it.

“It didn’t mean _nothing_ to me,” Cullen snaps, hurt, shocked and shaking with it.

“Just not as much as it meant to me, evidently.”

He narrows his bleary eyes. “What… What are you saying?” 

Dorian rolls his, he snorts. “I should think it’s perfectly fucking obvious what I’m trying to say, Cullen!” he’s shouting now. “Maker’s breath, you come in here as soaked as a fucking fruit cake talking to _me_ about how, how no one wants you, when I’ve been here… coddling you and sucking you off at a snap of your fucking fingers and… and _loving_ you for the better part of a year, and just putting up with it, but oh, _Lavellan_ doesn’t want _you_ and it’s like the world has fucking ended! I’m not doing this anymore! I refuse to sit here and be _used_ just because it’s convenient for you!” 

“We had an agreement!” And Cullen is shouting too, self-pity replaced with indignant rage. “Am I to sit here and apologise to you for – for not being a fucking mind reader?!” Then it’s not just rage on his voice, it’s _guilt_.

 _He knows._ It dawns on Dorian then that Cullen _knows_. He can see it in Cullen’s eyes, gone from sad, to shifty. He can see it in the seize of his shoulders and the uncomfortable curl of his lip. Dorian wonders: how long? How long has Cullen been pretending not to know, or knowing and not caring – knowing how cruel that is, and carrying on having Dorian any way.

The idea makes him feel sick. He wants to be wrong. He wants so badly for this to be wrong, for this to be a mistake, a conclusion jumped to in a fit of spite and fury.

“We had an agreement _a year ago_ and I think it’s fair to say rather a lot has gone on and changed since then, and… frankly, I refuse to believe you’re this dense, and that this is some great revelation to you, and that I don’t have some right to be just a bit angry with you, for the way you’ve treated me!” 

“It would be completely reasonable – had I had _any_ idea you had feelings for me!” He’s sobering up quickly, sitting up straight now, slur still on his voice, but steadier than it had been. Dorian wants to throw something at him.

“Cullen, for goodness’ sake, at least have enough fucking respect for me to tell the truth.” 

_Argue with me,_ Dorian thinks. _Please argue with me. Tell me I’m wrong._

Cullen’s lips twist into a snarl, then promptly un-twist. “I…” he begins. “I…” again. Dorian has rattled him enough that he’s stammering, anyway. “The possibility may have entered my mind,” Cullen says, carefully. Dorian finds himself so hurt, he no longer has the energy to be angry. There’s this initial surge within him at the shock of the truth – the way he’s felt upon hearing someone he’d known and loved has died. Then he just feels cold exhaustion. Cold, nothing. “B-but, it… I wasn’t… I needed you. Dorian, I needed you, I doubt I’d have gotten through the last year without you, and…”

Dorian clicks his tongue and waves his good arm. “I don’t… Cullen, I don’t want your excuses,” he says. “When did you know?”

And Cullen pauses to think again. If he considers lies or excuses, he abandons them, and settles upon the truth. “The Winter Palace. The morning after. I knew you were awake. I was waiting for you to get up and pull away, but you didn’t. I thought about the night before, and I… That was when I began to suspect. B-b-but I didn’t _know_. And Maker only knows I’d wanted to call it off but then… You were always so… You were always willing. You were so happy to be with me – no one… No one has ever…”

Dorian lets out a laugh he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. It’s bitter, and cruel. A laugh aimed _at_ a person, and nowhere else – though whether it’s for Cullen or himself, he isn’t sure.

“You chewed me up. You chewed me up and spat me out when you thought you were going to get yourself a fresh sweet.” 

“No… No, Dorian, I do care about you,” he promises, voice cracking with weight of its earnest tenderness. Cullen’s chin wobbles again. “It wasn’t… This wasn’t some great scheme on my part, I didn’t set out to hurt you. You made me an offer, and I accepted it. I _needed_ it, I didn’t want to stop – I didn’t think I could. And you didn’t want to stop either.”

There’s something supremely pathetic about this display, Dorian decides. The way Cullen can’t just admit fault, the way he has to make this about Dorian’s failings as well as his. The way he tries to wriggle out of looking bad – make himself the wounded party. 

Dorian doesn’t want to deal with this anymore; he can’t.

“Cullen, I don’t care. I really, do not care about what you _need_ any more, I… Look, please just… do us both a favour, and _fuck off_.”

A year’s frustration and disappointed is channelled into that obscenity and even Cullen seems to see he’s lost. He nods, and stands, swaying slightly as he leaves.

The slam of Dorian’s door rings hollow around his room and the empty corridor beyond it.

 

*

Lavellan grins. She’s still on crutches, but she’s no longer bed bound, and she’s jollier than any one’s seen her in months. Josephine thinks the party did her a lot of good – but Dorian thinks that having the weight of the world effectively lifted from your shoulders would cheer any one up, at least for a little while.

“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” she says. Dorian grins too. He was worried she wouldn’t agree. “Obviously I don’t want you to go, n’that, I mean, I like having you around, and… we’re friends, aren’t we?”

“I should hope so,” he says, patting her little hand where it rests upon her desk.

“I mean, I wanna make it clear I don’t really want to be at the head of another exalted march… No one wants that but… Getting you established in Tevinter as an ambassador? Getting Jennies in there, and we just start by rooting out the last of the Venatori… An’ you’ve already got influence. I trust you, we’ve got Orlais now, I could even ask Briala for agents I… I think it’s a fucking brilliant idea,” she trills. “Ambassador Pavus of the Inquisition, ey? When you mentioned going back, I thought you meant on your own, an’ I was really dubious, you know? But yeah, this! I’ll talk to Josie, I’ll talk to Sera, I’ll talk to Briala. I’ll get it sorted, it’s… It’s brilliant, honestly,” she says. Then her smile drops. “I’ll be sad to see you go, though.”

“You can visit.” 

“That’s a good point, I suppose, just… It’s going to start seeming empty round here, isn’t it? Solas is gone, Leliana’s leaving, Rainier’s off to the Wardens soon, Varric’s started talking about going back to Kirkwall, Cassandra’s thinking about rebuilding the Seekers and now you too… I understand we couldn’t spend the rest of our lives cooped up in here together but… I dunno, it’s a bit sad, isn’t it?” Lavellan crumples, a little bit. Her face, her shoulders – she flops back in her chair. “I used to worry about… What it was going to be like, going back to my clan after this was all over. How I was going to introduce my Da and the Keeper to Blackwall. But now I’ve got no clan, and no Da and no Keeper and not even Blackwall.” She’s crying. Dorian didn’t mean to make her cry. He offers her a handkerchief as fat tears spill down her cheeks and her chin, but she refuses it, wiping her hands on the backs of her sleeves. “Oh dear…” a sniff. “I’ve not had a proper cry in ages. I used to cry all the time – do you remember that?” she asks. Dorian nods.

He remembers an awkward little elven girl crying in the flooded dungeon of a Redcliffe castle that will never be. He remembers her clutching his sleeve, and he remembers feeling _irritated_. He frowns at himself, and, before he can stop himself, he’s stooping down to hug her. She hugs back, burying her face in his shoulder for a moment. They stay like that for perhaps a minute to long, and she begins to giggle.

“You… You can let go, I’m not really one for… hugging?” she tries.

“Oh, thank the Maker, me neither,” Dorian agrees.

 

*

A final drink with the remains of the Inner Circle is likely to leave him with a steaming headache for his travels, but he’s finished packing. He’s excited – there’s so much ahead of him – so much potential to do good, to set his Home back on the path it belongs, to save his people, his father among them, perhaps. But he’ll be leaving them. Lavellan, Sera, Bull, Varric, Cole, Josephine, Cassandra – even Vivienne has dragged herself down from atop her perch to bid him farewell. Cullen’s absence is noted in curious tone by Cole (“But he has so much he wants to tell you?”) so Dorian tells them they had a falling out over his leaving. 

“It would be a shame for you to leave on such a sour note with him,” says Cassandra, brow crinkling with concern. “You’d seemed so close.”

“It is a shame,” says Dorian, casually. “But there’s little to be done now.”

Any thought of Cullen vanishes in good liquor and good company as they retell their favourite stories about Dorian. Sera talks about when she knew Dorian was going to be good fun: his first night at Haven, when he got so drunk he was sick on her shoes. The Iron Bull wistfully tells him he wishes he got to see Dorian polish his staff, just the once. Varric makes a face at that, but smiles as he fondly recalls Dorian chasing Sera around their campfire brandishing a cut finger, threatening to perform blood magic on her with it. Josephine says she hardly feels like he’s leaving, as they’re going to be writing to each other so much, and Cole thanks him for answering difficult questions and helping him learn. Cassandra wishes him the best, and all the luck in the world with his father. Vivienne remains terribly quiet, until she lets out a sudden, uncharacteristic giggle, and then struggles to retell the story of the day Dorian accidentally spirit marked a door.

“And we were all stood,” she chuckles, “Trying to get through this… Flaming _ghost door_ waiting for it to… Stop being there, while _necromancer of the age_ , here, couldn’t work out how to cancel his own enchantment.” The others don’t seem to find this quite as funny as Vivienne does, but then they’re all laughing at her laughing. Laughing so hard, in fact, that they fail to notice Cullen has entered the tavern. He hovers behind their group, and Dorian excuses himself to speak to him, making sure they’re well within earshot of the others.

Cullen asks if they can speak in private – Dorian refuses.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” says Cullen.

“Well, I am!” Dorian says, all forced cheer, “Lavellan is taking me as far as Highever – Cole is coming too, because he wants to see the sea.” (“ _See the sea!_ ” Cole tweets behind them) “Then I’ve a ship to Cumberland, then it’s the Imperial highway to home.”

“Have you somewhere safe to stay?”

“Ah, yes, actually.” Dorian’s taken aback by the question – the motherly concern of it. Will Cullen ask him if he’s packed enough clean socks next? “I was to stay with Maevaris, until Josephine got something permanent sorted out, but then we picked through Alexius’ will and turns out he left me some property. The estate has gone to a cousin in poor Felix’s stead and…” Dorian waves his hand, casually (the left one – the sling is off, and he’s rather missed it). “I shan’t bore you with Tevinter inheritance laws. It’s a little dubious, but for the while, it seems there’s very nice apartment in Minrathous with my name on it.”

“Oh. That’s good to hear,” Cullen says, with a little smile.

“We’ll all miss him, won’t we guys?” calls Bull, raising his huge tankard. 

“You’ll have to visit,” says Dorian, to no one in particular. “Is there anything else you wanted, Cullen?”

“Ah… I’d hoped to speak in private, but it doesn’t matter, really,” Cullen mumbles. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and makes special effort to look Dorian in the eye. “I just wanted to say that… I’m sorry for the other evening and… I plan to write to you. I’m hoping some distance will help us.”

 _There is no us_ , Dorian thinks, _there never was an us, you saw to that._

“Yes, well, perhaps it will! I’ll be sure to write back, anyway.” In all honesty, he probably won’t. Perhaps it has not dawned on Cullen how thoroughly Dorian considers this bridge to be burnt, but in time, it may.

“I also wanted you to have this.” He holds an old coin in his palm. A Ferelden one, old enough that it bears the image of King Maric rather than Alistair or Queen Anora. “My brother gave it to me the day I left for training. It’s lucky, apparently. I thought you could use a bit of extra luck,” he says. He’s smiling. This appears to be some sort of peace offering – an awkward one at that. 

Dorian considers slapping the coin from Cullen’s hand, slapping his face, making a scene. But Cullen is so gently hopeful about his stupid little coin, that Dorian takes it anyway. 

“Ha! You’re probably right,” he says, slipping the coin into his back pocket. “Will you join us?”

Cullen refuses. Something about paperwork they both know he doesn’t have.

“Goodbye, for now,” he says before he leaves.

“Yes, goodbye.”

And then he’s gone.

Dorian sits back at the table, the coin in his pocket forgotten, for now. 

He returns to his bare quarters for his final night’s sleep in Skyhold. In tipsily removing his trousers, the coin falls from his pocket and between the floorboards without Dorian’s notice. He’s halfway to Highever before he gives it any thought, wondering where it could have gotten to – then, how many lucky coins Cullen had given to how many wounded friends and lovers over the years. The Frostback Mountains are still just about in view, the sun dropping behind them as Lavellan suggests they make camp for the night. 

Dorian wonders if he shall ever see the mountains again, or Skyhold. He wonders if he’ll ever see Cullen again – and then he isn’t quite sure if he cares.

It stings to realise, makes him sad that something he felt so deeply a month or so ago could have faded so greatly; that something so tender and warm could become so hard and so cold in so little time. 

He remembers the chess board in his pack, and asks Cole if he’d like to play.

“I don’t know how,” he says.

“I’ll teach you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this miserable fic, remember to like the fic and comment on the fic if you had positive feelings about the fic. 
> 
> Thx in advance for any kudos, comments and bookmarks - hmu on tumblr @apostategarbage!!
> 
> also: bonus fact: Deep Blue is the name of a giant chess playing computer


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